Re: The smell of rain

[John Denker <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

At 04:05 PM 8/20/99 -0500, paul o johnson wrote:
> Cliff
>
> Your question contains the implicit assumption that we all smell the same
> odor you did when the rain started. Personally, I can't recall ever walking
> in the park while it is raining.
>
> Perhaps the odor you detected was due to rain water landing on your skin and
> clothing, dissolving what it could of whatever resided there, then
> evaporating back into the air.

Without a doubt, skin, hair, and clothes give off distinctive odors when
they get wet.

But Cliff's point remains: even when the smeller is not wet, the landscape
gives off an odor.

I grew up literally in the shadow of saguaros, and there is an
unforgettably distinctive smell of rain on the desert.  I remember it the
way Proust remembers madeleines.  Rain in NJ doesn't smell the same (but
IMHO there is something in common).

No matter whatever else the rain kicks up, we should consider the
hypothesis that we might be able to smell H2O itself.  Why not?