By Rod Scotney
Childhood memories tend to come back with a soft glow. Long summers, cloudless skies, pavements hot enough to fry an egg, and the distant jingle of an ice cream van drifting across Winwick Road. Those are the memories that feel warm and safe.
But every so often, a different kind of memory survives — not because it was warm or magical, but because it was so utterly bizarre that it stamped itself onto your mind for life.
For me, that day came in the summer of 1967, on Pool Park, directly opposite my childhood home on Winwick Road. I was playing there with my younger sister, just an ordinary afternoon, nothing unusual in the air, nothing to suggest the sky was about to malfunction.
It began with a sound like soft hail. A faint pattering on the grass.
Then the pattering began to hop.
Tiny baby frogs — dozens of them — falling from the sky.
Not splatting, not injured, just landing. Perfectly alive. Perfectly confused. And so were we.
The whole “fall out” lasted no more than ten seconds, but in that brief window the sky dropped around a hundred tiny frogs onto a patch of ground no bigger than a back garden. Kids from along the road came running over, jars and buckets appearing as if by magic. My sister squealed with excitement. I scooped up a few of the little creatures, convinced I’d stumbled upon something magical.
And then I made the classic mistake only a seven year old could make.
I took them home to show my mum.
What I didn’t know — what no child could possibly know — was that my mum had a frog and reptile phobia so fierce it could detonate into full blown hysteria. And detonate it did. The moment she saw what I was proudly holding, the house erupted. Screams, panic, a neighbour rushing round to restore order. I stood there bewildered, still clutching my miraculous evidence of the impossible, wondering how something so magical could cause so much mayhem.
Back on Pool Park, the frog rain was already becoming legend. Adults were shaking their heads, kids were comparing their “catch”, and the older ones were muttering that they’d “never seen anything like it”. And they hadn’t. None of us had.
So what on earth happened?
The most likely explanation is a waterspout — a small tornado like column of air that forms over ponds or lakes. If it passes over shallow water, it can lift lightweight creatures such as tadpoles or tiny frogs into the air, carry them some distance, and then drop them when the wind dies.
It sounds far fetched, but meteorologists have documented it many times — and not just with frogs.
– In Birmingham, fish once fell from the sky during a storm, surprising commuters who were not expecting seafood with their drizzle.
– In Llanelli, Wales, 1987 — jellyfish fell during a storm, which must have been a shock for anyone who thought they’d left the beach behind.
So, Warrington is in good company. Nature occasionally enjoys a practical joke, and sometimes the punchline lands on Winwick Road.
A memory that refuses to fade
Even knowing the science, the memory hasn’t softened. Because for those of us who were there, it didn’t feel like meteorology. It felt like the world slipping its gears for a moment. A day when Pool Park — that ordinary patch of grass opposite my childhood home — briefly became the setting of a folk tale.
And more than half a century later, I can still see those tiny frogs falling through the air. I can still hear my mother’s screams. I can still feel the confusion of a child who thought he’d brought home magic, not mayhem.
The frogs were strange.
The frogs were impossible.
And impossible things stay with you forever.
