You’ve heard of it raining cats and dogs. Thankfully, it’s just a figure of speech, but did you know frogs were reportedly seen falling from the sky… in the Cotswolds of all places?
Animal rain, as it’s known, is a rare meteorological phenomenon in which flightless animals – or sometimes stunned birds – fall from the sky while it’s raining. Many episodes have been reported through time, often involving fish, spiders and amphibians. But what happened in Gloucestershire must rank among the weirdest.
In October 1987, a lady from Stroud described how a legion of “tiny rose-coloured frogs” came down during torrential rain. She told the Stroud News & Journal, they were “bouncing off umbrellas and pavements and hopped off in their hundreds to nearby streams and gardens.” A similar downpour was reported in nearby Cirencester.
A representative from the local Wildlife Trust was dispatched and identified the amphibians as albino common frogs (Rana temporaria). This explained the pinkish tinge but didn’t clarify how the little frogs ended up bouncing off car bonnets.
Since then, many explanations have been proposed. Some say that the lady was mistaken. Maybe it never rained frogs at all – when the downpour finished, the frogs may simply have hopped out of their terrestrial hiding places to enjoy the damp conditions.
Others have suggested that the hapless frogs – or perhaps even their tadpoles – got caught up in a tornado-like structure called a waterspout. The phenomenon occurs when a spinning column of wind and water mist forms over a large body of water. Small items can get sucked in and then transported with the moving waterspout, until the wind eases and they fall to earth.
If that’s the case, the frogs could have been accidentally transported from an unidentified freshwater source to one of the UK’s most picturesque locations. The residents may have been surprised, but at least the frogs didn’t croak.
