The Weather Notebook: Take A Whiff of Weather

Take A Whiff of Weather
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What is called the smell of rain is actually a collection of smells that in concert have become connected to rain in our minds. It could be different for different people. When rain is approaching the amount of water vapor in the air increases. This means that any of the complex aromatic molecules that happen to be wafting by have a better chance of being captured by nerve endings in your nose than they would if the weather were dry. Whatever's around, flowers, trees, dirt, pets, smoke, a building, anything simply smells more when it's wet. Add to this the fact that as rain approaches the air pressure lowers and that allows smell molecules to be released in great numbers again from what ever is around.

Now the smell of rain is almost exclusively thought of as an appealing odor because it accentuates the smell of nature. The smell of the air after the rain is also pleasant for the same reason, but it's cleaner in a way because the rain washes out particulates in the air like smoke or dust.

Researchers have found over the years that people who grew up in the early nineteen hundreds associate the smell of rain with comfort, joy, generally positive feelings. Those types of feelings for people brought up since 1950 though, tend to arise from the smell of artificial things like play-dough, or Vapo-rub, indicating a slow separation form the simple smells of the weather.

The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mount Washington Observatory where it is produced and recorded by Bryan Sejvar and Sean Doucette.