Frog Meteorology

The British talk about the weather a lot, the Australians study it. It’s a fairly subtle cultural difference that has emerged with the development of more sophisticated and accurate IT. Here in Queensland it is of particular interest at the moment as the seasons stand on the cusp between the hot dryness of the last few months and the steaming hot wet of the next few. The dominant high pressure is moving down the coast and a low pressure in the north central of the continent is developing, causing  troughs of instability – that may or may not bring rain. Better to be pessimistic. Everybody brings up the latest met office maps on their phones and  listens to the Queensland weather podcast which pulls out every nuance of the changing patterns in impassioned blown by blow analysis.

So, as the storm clouds thickened this afternoon it was a little like waiting by the starting line of the Grand National, bets placed first one way and the other on the wavering blue weather events cantering down the electronic maps. As night fell the first muffled bellows of thunder rolled over the mountain and the skyline began to flicker. Within the hour the sky was nearly permanently lit with sheet lightning and the thunder rolled and cracked. A spot of rain, followed by a couple more and then a downpour, rattling on the metal roof, blowing onto the veranda, soaking into the parched earth with a smell of musk and eucalyptus. We stood outside for a while just to feel and hear and see it.

Then a different noise cut across the soundscape, gruff, guttural and reverberant.

‘Oh’, shouts Rachel delightedly, ‘it will be the frogs washed out of the downpipe.’ During the hot season a sensible number of Queensland Green Treefrogs (Litoria caerulea) live up inside the plastic piping leading from the roof to the huge water-tank, at the shady side of the house. With the deluge they are washed out into the sieve and onto the decking. Their skin absorbs the moisture, and they start croaking . Grrrreeeat!