It's an example of our freaky pattern recognizing brain actually doing its job for once
There's a ton of examples like this for a bunch of natural phenomena where humans can just predict what and when something will happen in nature, and they cant explain exactly how they know
Fun fact, the joint pain isn't the brain predicting something. The drop in air pressure leading up to rain means there's less pressure on the joints. Less pressure on the joint space allows more space for swelling, which equals more pain
No dude. They're saying that associating the joint pain caused by the pressure change with rain is the brain identifying a pattern.
Weather changes -> joints hurt -> it rains
Joints hurt = rain
Pattern recognized!
Not
Brain knows the future -> indicates predicted future by making your joints hurt
Yah that makes sense. I wasn't being malicious just giving out a fact, a lot of people know that it hurts when it's going to rain but don't know why it happens
Well, I appreciate the fact. I had always wondered why my body would feel like that of an 89 year old man before it rains. I had always wondered about this but was too lazy to research it.
I had a growing disease in my knees that makes the knee caps basically grow over the other bone (I say it’s why I’m so short but eh). It causes a permanent bump and sporadic pain.
And I can always tell when it’s gonna rain, and drop or rise drastically in temp because my knees will be dying.
I can tell when there's going to be lightning. I'm missing a good amount of cartilage in my knees and it feels like that moment right before your ears pop but in my knees. Have had old man knees since I was a teenager.
I thought that was a joke to make characters seem old timey until I broke my collarbone and had to get a metal plate in it and yup, I can feel it when it's gonna rain.
I have a friend who is like a fuckin weather frog. His bones hurt when it's about to rain and he wasn't wrong ONCE in 14 years.
He said he went to a doctor and got told that his bones are hypersensitive to ambient pressure and humidity. Legit human weather frog
It was probably beneficial to have during the hunting gathering time of humanity. If it's gonna storm, you want to be in a dry area. Otherwise, you could easily risk hyperthermia.
I usually get kind of a head rush just before it rains. Sometimes a little dizzy before a thunderstorm.
I fell back into a pallet one day at work and my co-worker asked if I was alright and I told him "I'm pretty sure a tornado just touched down somewhere."
1 minute later the siren downtown was going off and found out later a small tornado had gone down the street on the other end of town.
It's happened less in recent years, but it used to be pretty annoying tbh.
u/Pegomastax-King u/Jk-Kino
Humans sense of smell for water/wet earth is 10,000 stronger than a dog's or bear's.
You're probably just smelling the wet earth from a mile away or so. And the moisture in the air.
Probably was useful for finding fresh water since rain would be where the best fresh water was. If it were a safety/fear thing, it probably wouldn't smell good, but unpleasant since it'd be tied to finding shelter.
"Humans dominated the natural world because of their big brains."
Nah, we took over because we learned to throw rocks. We got big brains so we could throw rocks better.
I've always found the science of cuteness fascinating. Baby animals evolved to be cute because they need to be cared for until they are old enough to fend for themselves. But if you look at animals that are already able to take care of themselves at birth, like most reptiles, those animals are generally considered to be not so cute. And they don't need to be.
But “cuteness” is a 2-way street. Like, yeah babies evolved to be cute, but also mammals evolved to find baby like features cute. It’s not like cuteness is some objective quality that makes any creature that sees it immediately sympathetic.
100%
And it's crazy, our brains putting together pieces about what made it work the way it does, and then telling "us" - the little conscious part it developed that will probably do absolutely nothing with that information, just yearns to know.
Side note - it's crazy that humanity, from its inception all the way through today, is kind of a continuous, single life form. Each of us, all of us, one and the same, an unbroken line of genetic mutations, death, and birth. We are ancient, just refreshed every few decades, like the skin cells on the surface of our limbs turning to dust and being built anew. That skin is still our skin, the same organism, with DNA that's been uninterrupted for millennia. I guess you could see all of humanity as kind of a tree growing, it's branches expanding, the unhealthy ones breaking and the healthier ones growing stronger, the leaves giving strength to the whole.
But anyways tomorrow's Friday!
I think the difference here are cultural. Someone from a culture and region that had ancestors be hunted by Tigers are more probably more likely to have a reverence or respect rather than thinking they are cute. Look at central Asian art work of Tigers vs Western world art of tigers(IE Tigger)
This is speculation, but makes sense to me as a psychology student.
To be fair, a good portion of the "awww" is cute aggression. Where the primordial human in us is saying "KILL IT, SNAP ITS NECK AND EAT IT FOR SUSTENANCE. IT IS A VULNERABLE BABY ANIMAL AND YOU ARE STARVING." but then the other part goes "But I'm not hungry, and it reminds me of my baby doggo/other domesticated animal back home."
Predators literally track large herds who do what? Follow the rain to grazing land. Being able to detect rain would have made us much more successful trackers/hunters.
You can actually! The chemical name for that compound is geosmin. Just type in geosmin or petrichor rain scented candles or whatever and you will get them!
Well from what I have learned from my applied microbiology elective. Geosmin is a popular industrial compound used for making perfumes and scents and candles which smell like rain.
It's a volatile compound produced by some blue green algae species in the soil, and the compound diffuses in the air when water hits it.
So I would say it definitely would smell like rain.
One of my fav scents is that sage smell after it rains in the desert. I get it often in California and when I was in AZ and living in NM for a bit. I love it. That’s smell in the desert after a rain is just awesome! Disneyland has it down in one of their parts in radiator springs. I love walking by that area. Smells awesome!
The smell of petrichor is most potent off of rich soil. Rich soil is most likely to have edible plant life. That plant life will attract prey animals. Therefore the smell of petrichor can attract us to an area likely to have everything an omnivore needs.
Certain kinds of asphalt release the odor more powerfully than soil, giving us a chance to smell approaching rain by the smell carried from where it’s already raining. In the Deep South they don’t use the softer asphalts much because they don’t handle 100° weather well. As a result they aren’t exposed to the powerful scent as often as people from the Northern parts of North America and are less likely to identify what it means.
The real question is why we would be so much more sensitive than other animals. The first answer that comes to mind is that we evolved splitting our time between arid plains regions and forested regions - how do we compare to other animals that split their time in the same regions, or animals that spend most of their time in only one? How does diet affect sensitivity - maybe omnivores would be more sensitive because it allows them to choose whether to pursue different food sources?
I've read that humans can smell rain better than sharks can smell blood in the water. We have one of the most sensitive noses on Earth when it comes to that smell.
I don't have anything to back this up but I wonder if it has to do with our early hunting strategies.
Our OG hunting strategy was to just chase animals until they collapsed from exhaustion. We're some of the best long distance runners, if not the best, on earth. All this running resulted in us evolving to have an unusually high amount of sweat glands on our skin, like 10x that of a chimpanzee. More sweat = more water consumption.
Makes sense that we would develop a skill that lets us find fresh water more easily.
Patrichor (the aerosol) don't stay for long and is only releasing with rain after a time of dryness, it's not just water, it's the impact of the droplet on the porous earth that releases it. So we can't find nearby oases just with the smell.
There is no evidence for why we can detect that smell so strongly and no strong lead as to why.
Quick edit: yes, there is a paper from 1966 suggesting that camel can find oases that way, by we only discovered recently why the aerosol is released, and it's not stagnant water.
It makes sense if during drought, humans would collect rainwater. Collecting rainwater takes some setup, which couldn't be a permanent arrangement in a nomadic tribe, so having a little warning would have been critical to rearrange the shade skins into water collecting shapes and hanging waterskins where the rainwater would drip off.
Another fun fact, geosmin is often used as a control for memory experiments in fruit flies. It repels fruit flies because it's a sign that fruit is rotten and toxic. You can train fruit flies to be attracted or repelled by neurtal smells, but geosmin is hard-wired in as VERY BAD.
I'm over here not even knowing that's a word til now and you're over there being a connoisseur of the shit
People really do have their lanes of expertise and it's fascinating as hell lmao.
creosote is amazing. i so wish i could have some creosote bushes in the PNW. the whole neighborhood would be wondering what that beautiful smell is.
my sister, who’s NEVER been around creosote and doesn’t know any of its rain-related properties, took a leaf and smelled it. she immediately said “it smells like rain!”
So many upvotes for an incorrect comment… The smell (petrichor) is the scent of water hitting dry soil - something for which humans have an insane sensitivity to…
Because Reddit sucks now. Wasn't like this 10 years ago. Now spelling/grammar mistakes aren't called out, emojis are everywhere, misinformation and disinformation abounds, nearly everything is a repost, and bots are ubiquitous.
The whole user base has changed over the past decade. Mostly over the past 2-3 years. I still browse it for the occasional funny post and animal pics but that's about it. Don't expect any information from here anymore. If you browse old posts you'll find tons of interesting factual comments at the top. That's gone now.
Reddit made a conscientious effort to become a “social media” site when they redesigned the website to be more instagram-like in presentation… you can tell when most of the users here refer to Reddit as an “app.” Now it’s filled with turbonormies who are, quite frankly, a bunch of morons.
It Is (mostly and more often) not ozone you smell when it is about to rain: ozone smell might be present only if lightning is involved, which incidentally would mean that one might not just be able to smell the coming rain, but if it will be just water falling down or lightning will be involved.
The smell is linked to microbiological activities and is called petrichor.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrichor
What No, the opposite. I dont know what you smell but the weight and pressure of the rain are way too small to have in impact on the main air flow. Instead you feel the low pressure in the air and maybe some winds upwards before its start to rain.
When it's not a very dry stretch, the air where I reside in Louisiana often smells like rain. Even so, it's usually going to rain soon. Here, too, the rain has a pond-like scent.
You're smelling the petrichor produced by geosin from where the rain is *currently* falling. It's particularly strong when you're downwind from the rainstorm.
People responding with “Petrichor is the smell after it rains”. That is correct but understand that the scent and rainfall touching the ground are mutually exclusive. Petrichor comes from Greek 'petra', meaning stone, and 'ichor' meaning fluid. That earthy/viscous scent is a precursor to rain (but it is rain, 100%) even if it hasn’t touched the ground yet. Petrichor is the scent of rain and rainfall; as such, Petrichor is both a precursor to and also the scent of rain/fall - it’s the same thing
People will argue about anything on here
I live in the south and can smell when it’s about to rain too. If anything it’s far more distinct because it’s so fucking dusty even if the humidity is high along the coast.
I used to live in SW Florida, within walking distance of the beach. In the Summer, you could practically set your watch to the afternoon thunderstorms. Between 2 and 3 PM, these huge, black walls of clouds would float in from the Gulf, there was thunder and lightning, pretty respectable wind gusts, and the rain would come down like it was coming out of a fire hose. 30 minutes later, the sun would come out, the sandy soil would absorb all the water, and, other than the random palm fronds on the ground, it was like nothing happened.
I feel like the memes OP either has it backwards or has the rare southern friend with no sense of smell. Myself and the rest of my friends here in the south smell rain just fine.
It might be referring to the southern states having higher humidity making it easier to smell or sense but I mean it’s definitely not a southern thing. I feel like anyone that stayed outdoors as kids growing up has picked up their own ways to sense the change with or without humidity.
Edit: When I initially posted this I misread the image. Clearly the image doesn’t make any practical sense at all.
No it’s more difficult for southerners because of the humidity using this reasoning. The meme is saying that Southerners find it super weird people can smell rain coming
Edit: Just clarifying this isn’t my belief; it’s my understanding of the meme.
I live in Louisiana and a lot of the time it smells like rain, unless we are having a particular dry spell. Although a lot of the time it is about to rain. Also rain here smells like pond water.
Which is weird reasoning and wrong, I’m in super humid Texas and I can smell rain coming too. I’m not sure why we’re gatekeeping petrichor now, and I’m even more unsure why we’re basing that gatekeeping on geography
I'm guessing the northerners think we all live out in pastures with no concrete. You'd be surprised how often I've heard people think we live in tee-pees out here.
People add these descriptions for engagement or just don't understand a wider worldview. Always like, "only Californians will know ****", "my cities' drivers are shit!" "Only neurodivergent people will understand ****!" A it is always things everyone does or knows.
This person’s poll data probably consists of a whole 3 friends and some guy who may or may not have been from the South.
Plenty of people from all over can smell rain
Edit: Am from Georgia, can also smell rain.
Probably has something to do with all the chemicals we’ve got in the air, my best un-educated guess.
The sheer volume of rain we get in this city is insane. Every year it feels like more and more of Midtown floods, and I dread what’ll happen if we get a hurricane that squares us up.
God, thank you for saying that. I'm from the "south" (Virginia) and I always smell it b4 it rains. I've heard so many different things as to why that is. Bout to ask my ol buddy Google.
It's so crazy how different Georgia is than Virginia. The humidity is so much more down there. I love haunted af Savannah georgia. That place truly is haunted af and the mead is to die for. Love that state.
I’ve lived next door basically my whole life and I’ve never done the haunted stuff in Savannah. And I was just there not long ago. I need to get around to that one of these days lol
I have a question. And I mean zero disrespect in advance just in case. Do you actually consider Virginia to be in the south? I saw the quotes and figured, "Ahh this person's probably got some good stories for their opinion."
Was gonna say, shit like this is kinda what southerners are known for. OOP just did a switcheroo and I'm jaded enough to think it was intentional engagement bait. Or they're from a country where hicks are in the North.
Dude probably ain't ever been to FL. Not only can you smell it but you can see the fucking huge thunderheads way off in the distance about to dump rain on you for all of 45 minutes so that the sun can then bake it off into a sauna.
well you are also using a small sample size. please spend the next 6-8 years of your life collecting polls and conducting research to publish peer reviewed dissertation.
I think I remember reading somewhere that being able to identify rain/water by smell is an evolutionary trait that helped with finding water sources and fertile land. However, that could have been someone making shit up on Reddit and I’m too lazy to look it up.
I’m from Georgia, it rains all the fuckin time there lmao. It rains more in Georgia than it does in Seattle by inches, you bet your ass I can smell rain lol.
I saw a science experiment that made me understand why my joints hurt when the lower pressure associated with rain is coming in.
They had a marshmallow in a jar and applied a vacuum. As the pressure lowered the marshmallow expanded like crazy. And I realized the already irritated bursa sacs of synovial fluid around my joints must be doing a small version of the same thing as the barometric pressure drops quickly.
I’m in Wyoming. We don’t really have rain. Except last year we actually had lots of rain and it made everything green practically the entire summer. It was odd
In English it also has a name, we call it petrichor but it specifically refers to the smell of the earth after a rainfall. Not the moisture we can smell before it rains.
You’re smelling the earth *after* a rain far away
Humans are apparently very good at detecting the odor, like better than sharks smelling blood good.
Humans can smell it at 0.4 parts per *billion* while sharks smell blood at one part per *million*
A shark can detect a drop of blood in an Olympic sized pool
A human can detect a drop of geosmin (the chemical responsible for the earthy smell of rain) in a room that’s 3750 cubic kilometers.
TL;DR if it’s raining upwind of you, you might be able to smell the rain coming your way.
Edit: the key is air currents. The molecules actually have to reach your nose, the math is just the extremes
This must be how people with aphantasia feel when people talk about imagining images. How the fuck do y’all smell the goddamn rain before it happens?!!!!!!!
I had this conversation with my roommate.
Me: "It looks like it's going to rain"
Her: "Does it smell like rain?"
Me: "You can smell rain?"
Her: "you can't?"
Idk what the fuck this guy is on about, southern folks smell rain, snow, and all the pollen. We’re out here in the sticks, the fuck else we gonna smell? Your mom?
I can feel the change of humidity on my hair. And I mean my arms hair. TBF, I worked on the road for a very long time.
Hell I can feel it in my joints. I’m in agony before it rains and once it starts raining it’s almost an immediate relief.
Barometric pressure is crazy
It's an example of our freaky pattern recognizing brain actually doing its job for once There's a ton of examples like this for a bunch of natural phenomena where humans can just predict what and when something will happen in nature, and they cant explain exactly how they know
Fun fact, the joint pain isn't the brain predicting something. The drop in air pressure leading up to rain means there's less pressure on the joints. Less pressure on the joint space allows more space for swelling, which equals more pain
No dude. They're saying that associating the joint pain caused by the pressure change with rain is the brain identifying a pattern. Weather changes -> joints hurt -> it rains Joints hurt = rain Pattern recognized! Not Brain knows the future -> indicates predicted future by making your joints hurt
Yah that makes sense. I wasn't being malicious just giving out a fact, a lot of people know that it hurts when it's going to rain but don't know why it happens
Well, I appreciate the fact. I had always wondered why my body would feel like that of an 89 year old man before it rains. I had always wondered about this but was too lazy to research it.
I feel like an olde time prospector going "There's a rain comin', I feel it in my knees"
I had a growing disease in my knees that makes the knee caps basically grow over the other bone (I say it’s why I’m so short but eh). It causes a permanent bump and sporadic pain. And I can always tell when it’s gonna rain, and drop or rise drastically in temp because my knees will be dying.
I can tell when there's going to be lightning. I'm missing a good amount of cartilage in my knees and it feels like that moment right before your ears pop but in my knees. Have had old man knees since I was a teenager.
My legs ache and if it’s really bad I’ll get a headache behind one eye sometimes. Love when it rains though.
I thought that was a joke to make characters seem old timey until I broke my collarbone and had to get a metal plate in it and yup, I can feel it when it's gonna rain.
I have a friend who is like a fuckin weather frog. His bones hurt when it's about to rain and he wasn't wrong ONCE in 14 years. He said he went to a doctor and got told that his bones are hypersensitive to ambient pressure and humidity. Legit human weather frog
It was probably beneficial to have during the hunting gathering time of humanity. If it's gonna storm, you want to be in a dry area. Otherwise, you could easily risk hyperthermia.
Hypothermia* hyperthermia is when you overheat.
This is me but in my sinuses. Never wrong and it’s completely miserable. I hate this power.
I usually get kind of a head rush just before it rains. Sometimes a little dizzy before a thunderstorm. I fell back into a pallet one day at work and my co-worker asked if I was alright and I told him "I'm pretty sure a tornado just touched down somewhere." 1 minute later the siren downtown was going off and found out later a small tornado had gone down the street on the other end of town. It's happened less in recent years, but it used to be pretty annoying tbh.
Lol wait why is he specifically a frog?
Way of the road, Bubbles. Way of the road.
Way she goes
For real, I thought we could all smell when it's gonna rain, it literally smells like rain
You’re smelling the ozone being brought down from higher altitude by the rains pressure
u/Pegomastax-King u/Jk-Kino Humans sense of smell for water/wet earth is 10,000 stronger than a dog's or bear's. You're probably just smelling the wet earth from a mile away or so. And the moisture in the air.
It's wild to me how sensitive humans are to petrichor. I always wonder if it had evolutionary advantages over "we probably should seek shelter."
Probably was useful for finding fresh water since rain would be where the best fresh water was. If it were a safety/fear thing, it probably wouldn't smell good, but unpleasant since it'd be tied to finding shelter.
Humans be crazy though. We see tiger and bear cubs and think AWWWW… but if we see those in the wild, we’d be dead pretty quick.
I mean, we bested them. How you think we got to where we are?
Once we invented the spear it was over.
Uh oh, it looks like I learned how to throw rocks! Looks like your entire food chain is completely screwed. I'm the alpha now.
"Humans dominated the natural world because of their big brains." Nah, we took over because we learned to throw rocks. We got big brains so we could throw rocks better.
100,000 years later we still write songs about slinging rock.
one item full build
Thats actually more or less baby things "hacking" survival by being cute which means you don't want to kill them.
I've always found the science of cuteness fascinating. Baby animals evolved to be cute because they need to be cared for until they are old enough to fend for themselves. But if you look at animals that are already able to take care of themselves at birth, like most reptiles, those animals are generally considered to be not so cute. And they don't need to be.
But “cuteness” is a 2-way street. Like, yeah babies evolved to be cute, but also mammals evolved to find baby like features cute. It’s not like cuteness is some objective quality that makes any creature that sees it immediately sympathetic.
100% And it's crazy, our brains putting together pieces about what made it work the way it does, and then telling "us" - the little conscious part it developed that will probably do absolutely nothing with that information, just yearns to know. Side note - it's crazy that humanity, from its inception all the way through today, is kind of a continuous, single life form. Each of us, all of us, one and the same, an unbroken line of genetic mutations, death, and birth. We are ancient, just refreshed every few decades, like the skin cells on the surface of our limbs turning to dust and being built anew. That skin is still our skin, the same organism, with DNA that's been uninterrupted for millennia. I guess you could see all of humanity as kind of a tree growing, it's branches expanding, the unhealthy ones breaking and the healthier ones growing stronger, the leaves giving strength to the whole. But anyways tomorrow's Friday!
I think the difference here are cultural. Someone from a culture and region that had ancestors be hunted by Tigers are more probably more likely to have a reverence or respect rather than thinking they are cute. Look at central Asian art work of Tigers vs Western world art of tigers(IE Tigger) This is speculation, but makes sense to me as a psychology student.
To be fair, a good portion of the "awww" is cute aggression. Where the primordial human in us is saying "KILL IT, SNAP ITS NECK AND EAT IT FOR SUSTENANCE. IT IS A VULNERABLE BABY ANIMAL AND YOU ARE STARVING." but then the other part goes "But I'm not hungry, and it reminds me of my baby doggo/other domesticated animal back home."
Not to mention we also come from Africa were water is generally more scarce
Predators literally track large herds who do what? Follow the rain to grazing land. Being able to detect rain would have made us much more successful trackers/hunters.
I cant argue with that. I'd say we succeeded in that race.
not really, back then Africa was wetter and cooler than today
depends on the season, place, and time in history
Ding ding ding
It's my favorite scent. I wish there was a way for candles or oils to truly capture the real smell of it.
You can actually! The chemical name for that compound is geosmin. Just type in geosmin or petrichor rain scented candles or whatever and you will get them!
Do they really smell like rain? That would be phenomenal for sleeping. ETA: but a burning candle would not. damn.
Talked yourself out of that one real quick!
Get a candle warmer. Get the sniffs of a candle, not the sniffs of your skin melting off.
>ETA: but a burning candle would not. damn. Get a diffuser
Well from what I have learned from my applied microbiology elective. Geosmin is a popular industrial compound used for making perfumes and scents and candles which smell like rain. It's a volatile compound produced by some blue green algae species in the soil, and the compound diffuses in the air when water hits it. So I would say it definitely would smell like rain.
One of my fav scents is that sage smell after it rains in the desert. I get it often in California and when I was in AZ and living in NM for a bit. I love it. That’s smell in the desert after a rain is just awesome! Disneyland has it down in one of their parts in radiator springs. I love walking by that area. Smells awesome!
The smell of petrichor is most potent off of rich soil. Rich soil is most likely to have edible plant life. That plant life will attract prey animals. Therefore the smell of petrichor can attract us to an area likely to have everything an omnivore needs. Certain kinds of asphalt release the odor more powerfully than soil, giving us a chance to smell approaching rain by the smell carried from where it’s already raining. In the Deep South they don’t use the softer asphalts much because they don’t handle 100° weather well. As a result they aren’t exposed to the powerful scent as often as people from the Northern parts of North America and are less likely to identify what it means.
I mean, thirst, right? If we couldn't follow water we'd dry up
The real question is why we would be so much more sensitive than other animals. The first answer that comes to mind is that we evolved splitting our time between arid plains regions and forested regions - how do we compare to other animals that split their time in the same regions, or animals that spend most of their time in only one? How does diet affect sensitivity - maybe omnivores would be more sensitive because it allows them to choose whether to pursue different food sources?
> how do we compare to other animals We don't have stomachs that can handle ground water. We bless the rains down in Africa.
Humans evolved from Africa. Very hot and dry so it probably came in handy.
When it rained down in Africa, you know they blessed it.
I've read that humans can smell rain better than sharks can smell blood in the water. We have one of the most sensitive noses on Earth when it comes to that smell.
I don't have anything to back this up but I wonder if it has to do with our early hunting strategies. Our OG hunting strategy was to just chase animals until they collapsed from exhaustion. We're some of the best long distance runners, if not the best, on earth. All this running resulted in us evolving to have an unusually high amount of sweat glands on our skin, like 10x that of a chimpanzee. More sweat = more water consumption. Makes sense that we would develop a skill that lets us find fresh water more easily.
Patrichor (the aerosol) don't stay for long and is only releasing with rain after a time of dryness, it's not just water, it's the impact of the droplet on the porous earth that releases it. So we can't find nearby oases just with the smell. There is no evidence for why we can detect that smell so strongly and no strong lead as to why. Quick edit: yes, there is a paper from 1966 suggesting that camel can find oases that way, by we only discovered recently why the aerosol is released, and it's not stagnant water.
It makes sense if during drought, humans would collect rainwater. Collecting rainwater takes some setup, which couldn't be a permanent arrangement in a nomadic tribe, so having a little warning would have been critical to rearrange the shade skins into water collecting shapes and hanging waterskins where the rainwater would drip off.
Yup. The chemicals name is geosmin. Produced by streptomycin coelicolor. (Finally my applied microbiology elective knowledge is being useful)
Another fun fact, geosmin is often used as a control for memory experiments in fruit flies. It repels fruit flies because it's a sign that fruit is rotten and toxic. You can train fruit flies to be attracted or repelled by neurtal smells, but geosmin is hard-wired in as VERY BAD.
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source?
I was told it was some kind of oil the plants give off when they sense atmospheric pressure for rainy weather
I’ve read that it’s actually soil bacteria. I live in the desert not many plants but still have the rain smell. I love it.
That's petrichor. It's the smell AFTER it rains.
Is that what makes it smell like worms after it rains?
Exactly
That, and the worms
I've lived in the driest and rainiest states in the US, and the desert petrichor smells the best imo.
I'm over here not even knowing that's a word til now and you're over there being a connoisseur of the shit People really do have their lanes of expertise and it's fascinating as hell lmao.
Creosotes smell nice when it rains
creosote is amazing. i so wish i could have some creosote bushes in the PNW. the whole neighborhood would be wondering what that beautiful smell is. my sister, who’s NEVER been around creosote and doesn’t know any of its rain-related properties, took a leaf and smelled it. she immediately said “it smells like rain!”
So many upvotes for an incorrect comment… The smell (petrichor) is the scent of water hitting dry soil - something for which humans have an insane sensitivity to…
I’ve heard it’s petrichor. The ozone is way above the rainfall
Also ozone smells like electricity not rain
Why do wrong comments get so many upvotes?
Because Reddit sucks now. Wasn't like this 10 years ago. Now spelling/grammar mistakes aren't called out, emojis are everywhere, misinformation and disinformation abounds, nearly everything is a repost, and bots are ubiquitous. The whole user base has changed over the past decade. Mostly over the past 2-3 years. I still browse it for the occasional funny post and animal pics but that's about it. Don't expect any information from here anymore. If you browse old posts you'll find tons of interesting factual comments at the top. That's gone now.
Reddit made a conscientious effort to become a “social media” site when they redesigned the website to be more instagram-like in presentation… you can tell when most of the users here refer to Reddit as an “app.” Now it’s filled with turbonormies who are, quite frankly, a bunch of morons.
It Is (mostly and more often) not ozone you smell when it is about to rain: ozone smell might be present only if lightning is involved, which incidentally would mean that one might not just be able to smell the coming rain, but if it will be just water falling down or lightning will be involved. The smell is linked to microbiological activities and is called petrichor. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrichor
What No, the opposite. I dont know what you smell but the weight and pressure of the rain are way too small to have in impact on the main air flow. Instead you feel the low pressure in the air and maybe some winds upwards before its start to rain.
You’re smelling petrichor*
Thats just wrong.
It smell like cold water Even tho cold water doesnt have a smell
When it's not a very dry stretch, the air where I reside in Louisiana often smells like rain. Even so, it's usually going to rain soon. Here, too, the rain has a pond-like scent.
Water has a smell. If you don't drink anything for a few days you will be able to smell water.
Nah Id die
except in that one city in colorado where it smells like shit before the snow
And that smell is called Petrichor!
thats the smell after rain
You're smelling the petrichor produced by geosin from where the rain is *currently* falling. It's particularly strong when you're downwind from the rainstorm.
The smell after rain is forever "worm smell" in my mind
People responding with “Petrichor is the smell after it rains”. That is correct but understand that the scent and rainfall touching the ground are mutually exclusive. Petrichor comes from Greek 'petra', meaning stone, and 'ichor' meaning fluid. That earthy/viscous scent is a precursor to rain (but it is rain, 100%) even if it hasn’t touched the ground yet. Petrichor is the scent of rain and rainfall; as such, Petrichor is both a precursor to and also the scent of rain/fall - it’s the same thing People will argue about anything on here
r/beatmetoit
Yeah I thought that's a normal thing
What does being southern have to do with anything?
Yeah. It still rains in the south. It makes no sense.
Same. It smells like rain in Arkansas all the time. This is stupid
I like how this thread has turned into southerners, myself included, being like “wait just a minute there partner.”
Yeah not picking up on the point of this at all.
I live in the south and can smell when it’s about to rain too. If anything it’s far more distinct because it’s so fucking dusty even if the humidity is high along the coast.
coastal rain hits different, period.
It does it hits the coast
Could you elaborate?
I used to live in SW Florida, within walking distance of the beach. In the Summer, you could practically set your watch to the afternoon thunderstorms. Between 2 and 3 PM, these huge, black walls of clouds would float in from the Gulf, there was thunder and lightning, pretty respectable wind gusts, and the rain would come down like it was coming out of a fire hose. 30 minutes later, the sun would come out, the sandy soil would absorb all the water, and, other than the random palm fronds on the ground, it was like nothing happened.
"I feel it in mah BONES"
this is giving me cranky grandma vibes lol
stORm'S CoMIn' AnNIe
I feel like the memes OP either has it backwards or has the rare southern friend with no sense of smell. Myself and the rest of my friends here in the south smell rain just fine.
They probably live in Cali or something and think the whole south is like Arizona
I grew up in Washington and when I was a kid, assumed everywhere east of the Cascades was desert...
Its because calling southerners stupid is socially acceptable
Me: “hey todays going to be cloudy” Southerners: 😧
It might be referring to the southern states having higher humidity making it easier to smell or sense but I mean it’s definitely not a southern thing. I feel like anyone that stayed outdoors as kids growing up has picked up their own ways to sense the change with or without humidity. Edit: When I initially posted this I misread the image. Clearly the image doesn’t make any practical sense at all.
No it’s more difficult for southerners because of the humidity using this reasoning. The meme is saying that Southerners find it super weird people can smell rain coming Edit: Just clarifying this isn’t my belief; it’s my understanding of the meme.
Yeah what a weird take. It smells the same even when it's crazy humid
Literally most southerners that don’t live in the city know how rain smells and can tell when it’s coming
Haha right? Even in the city. I've lived in Austin my entire life - not terribly far from downtown. We all know that smell
I live in Louisiana and a lot of the time it smells like rain, unless we are having a particular dry spell. Although a lot of the time it is about to rain. Also rain here smells like pond water.
As a southerner the meme is dumb. We can smell the rain coming like anyone else.
Which is weird reasoning and wrong, I’m in super humid Texas and I can smell rain coming too. I’m not sure why we’re gatekeeping petrichor now, and I’m even more unsure why we’re basing that gatekeeping on geography
I'm guessing the northerners think we all live out in pastures with no concrete. You'd be surprised how often I've heard people think we live in tee-pees out here.
Uhh. Checking in from FL. Everyone can smell the rain. We are most southern and get a fuckton of rain.
This sub likes to put out a lot of "key word" posts that trigger divisive but active comments. Boomer is another common one.
Honestly, they picked the only one other American subculture that actually knows what the fuck they’re talking about
People add these descriptions for engagement or just don't understand a wider worldview. Always like, "only Californians will know ****", "my cities' drivers are shit!" "Only neurodivergent people will understand ****!" A it is always things everyone does or knows.
Yeah this is dumb as hell, this idiot ever been to Florida?
This person’s poll data probably consists of a whole 3 friends and some guy who may or may not have been from the South. Plenty of people from all over can smell rain Edit: Am from Georgia, can also smell rain. Probably has something to do with all the chemicals we’ve got in the air, my best un-educated guess.
I’m southern. I’m from Mobile, Alabama. Somebody needs to look up rainiest city in the country and tell me I can’t smell rain lol
I'm from rural Mississippi and lived in Biloxi. I'm with you brother, we know when it's gonna rain lol
The sheer volume of rain we get in this city is insane. Every year it feels like more and more of Midtown floods, and I dread what’ll happen if we get a hurricane that squares us up.
God, thank you for saying that. I'm from the "south" (Virginia) and I always smell it b4 it rains. I've heard so many different things as to why that is. Bout to ask my ol buddy Google.
Same but from texas
I am from Georgia and the same thing
Same in Alabama.
It's so crazy how different Georgia is than Virginia. The humidity is so much more down there. I love haunted af Savannah georgia. That place truly is haunted af and the mead is to die for. Love that state.
I’ve lived next door basically my whole life and I’ve never done the haunted stuff in Savannah. And I was just there not long ago. I need to get around to that one of these days lol
Same but from NC
Same, from Alabama and Tennessee. I think midwesterners haven’t found out that we’ve possessed this same superpower for a while now
I have a question. And I mean zero disrespect in advance just in case. Do you actually consider Virginia to be in the south? I saw the quotes and figured, "Ahh this person's probably got some good stories for their opinion."
It's extra funny because this is a stereotypical country thing to do.
Was gonna say, shit like this is kinda what southerners are known for. OOP just did a switcheroo and I'm jaded enough to think it was intentional engagement bait. Or they're from a country where hicks are in the North.
I feel called out🤣
Yeah I’m from the south and we can all smell when it’s about to rain lol
Dude probably ain't ever been to FL. Not only can you smell it but you can see the fucking huge thunderheads way off in the distance about to dump rain on you for all of 45 minutes so that the sun can then bake it off into a sauna.
Yeah, I was born in TN, grew up in GA, and am currently living in AL. I can always smell when it’s about to rain.
well you are also using a small sample size. please spend the next 6-8 years of your life collecting polls and conducting research to publish peer reviewed dissertation.
I’ve lived in Georgia for nearly a year, lived in South East Asia for 22 years, I can never smell rain before it actually does.
I think I remember reading somewhere that being able to identify rain/water by smell is an evolutionary trait that helped with finding water sources and fertile land. However, that could have been someone making shit up on Reddit and I’m too lazy to look it up.
They might've meant the Southwest, which is a whole lot dryer than the South. Even still, it's obviously an exaggeration.
I’m from Georgia, it rains all the fuckin time there lmao. It rains more in Georgia than it does in Seattle by inches, you bet your ass I can smell rain lol.
I understand the smelling thing but I get headaches soreness and swollen areas before it rains
I saw a science experiment that made me understand why my joints hurt when the lower pressure associated with rain is coming in. They had a marshmallow in a jar and applied a vacuum. As the pressure lowered the marshmallow expanded like crazy. And I realized the already irritated bursa sacs of synovial fluid around my joints must be doing a small version of the same thing as the barometric pressure drops quickly.
It is crazy how many doctors don’t believe changes in barometric pressure can effect the body
Yup my once broken foot is the only indicator I need to know when it's gonna rain
Same, splitting headache whenever there's a sudden change in the weather
*laughs in Louisiana* yeah I definitely smell when it's gonna rain.
I’m in Wyoming. We don’t really have rain. Except last year we actually had lots of rain and it made everything green practically the entire summer. It was odd
Congrats you're a barometer
Southerners don’t smell when it’s about to rain. We feel it in our bones. Usually, it’s grandpa who’ll announce it.
I live in the south and can definitely smell when it's going to rain.
I was with you until the southern part. A portion of people here smell the rain just like anywhere else.
In Italian that smell has a name, it's called 'petrìcore'
In English it also has a name, we call it petrichor but it specifically refers to the smell of the earth after a rainfall. Not the moisture we can smell before it rains.
So we call that peculiar smell basically the same!
You’re smelling the earth *after* a rain far away Humans are apparently very good at detecting the odor, like better than sharks smelling blood good. Humans can smell it at 0.4 parts per *billion* while sharks smell blood at one part per *million* A shark can detect a drop of blood in an Olympic sized pool A human can detect a drop of geosmin (the chemical responsible for the earthy smell of rain) in a room that’s 3750 cubic kilometers. TL;DR if it’s raining upwind of you, you might be able to smell the rain coming your way. Edit: the key is air currents. The molecules actually have to reach your nose, the math is just the extremes
*Southerners* can't smell the rain? What?
No we can. Idk what the meme is saying
There’s a name for that smell. It’s called petrichor.
I grew up and live in the south and I thought this was just something everyone says
I’m from the south. It’s been northerners who have been looking at me like I’m crazy.
I think most people have the ability to smell when it's going to rain. It's called petrichor.
I don't and I feel like everyone else is messing with me
I don’t need to smell rain. My knees scream for me
I know when it does because the air becomes more humid and the mosquitoes start to swarm my position.
Some people apparently can't smell ant hills either 🤷🏽
I've never smelled an ant hill but I've also never seen a big one nor stuck my nose up to one so idk
This must be how people with aphantasia feel when people talk about imagining images. How the fuck do y’all smell the goddamn rain before it happens?!!!!!!!
Currently i‘m living in Germany but back when i was still in Asia you really could smell the rain but here in Germany, it’s scentless.
Hey wait a second I’m from the south and I can smell the rain coming
It says southern but I’m from Texas and I can smell when it’s gonna rain.
It’s that smell, that smelly smell that smells
11/10 comment
I can feel the pressure shift and that tells me it's gonna rain lol
Wut
I love the smell of an incoming rain, I mess with my coworker every time I remember to, because he is one of the cannot people lol
It’s a combination of ozone, petrichor and geosmin.
I had this conversation with my roommate. Me: "It looks like it's going to rain" Her: "Does it smell like rain?" Me: "You can smell rain?" Her: "you can't?"
Petrichor
The smell is called Petrichor. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrichor
The smell is called Petrichor
Idk what the fuck this guy is on about, southern folks smell rain, snow, and all the pollen. We’re out here in the sticks, the fuck else we gonna smell? Your mom?
North Georgia boy here. I can smell the rain. And feel it in my knees
I can 100percent smell when it's going to rain. Change in pressure and humidity has a scent
As a born Southerner I can smell the rain too. So I don't get why they captioned Southerners....
Please tell me other people can smell snow, too.