Is it straight hallucination or does the smoke from a BBQ grill shift to blow directly into the direction of the person tending the grill? No matter what the direction of the prevailing wind, the smoke seems invariably to follow the position of the grill master. Is this a generally recognized phenomenon and, if so, is there a known reason for it?
It’s not reality, it is Confirmation bias or Selective Memory. We remember the times the smoke gets in our eyes far more than we remember when there is no problem.
Can confirm. As someone who spent many, many, many hours huddled around a campfire with over a decade in the Boy Scouts. Barring a constant uni-directional wind, the smoke seems to end up in everyone’s eyes pretty equally.
Yes, I’ve noticed this with BBQ grills and campfires. I believe it’s a corollary to Murphy’s Law, and also the phenomenon wherein no matter which checkout line one chooses, it’s invariably the slowest-moving one.
It’s true. Science hasn’t produced an explanation yet, but repeated testing yields the same results consistently.
I think TriPolar is on to something, maybe it’s not confirmation bias.
Although the wind direction is random, multiverse theory says that there are some universes where, by chance, the smoke has always blown toward the griller. Only in those universes will we observe and discuss this apparently non-random phenomenon.
The good news is that with four random wind directions, as we go forward in time the proportion of all the possible future versions of ourselves that will remain in a universe where the wind always blows toward the griller decreases by a factor of 4 every time someone has a barbecue.
It’s true about checkout lines, not that the one you’re in will be the slowest, but that it is unlikely to be the fastest (which makes perfect sense if you think about it.)
There’s a tiny grain of truth in it. If you’re standing close to the BBQ, a gentle breeze from behind you can cause vortices (as it blows past you) that may trap the smoke and allow it to ascend more or less vertically to the level of your face before the wind carries it away.
So there are two cases where the smoke can get in your face:
- When you are facing the bbq and the wind is blowing toward your face
- When you are facing the bbq and the wind is blowing from behind you
That was my thought too. The leeward side of an obstacle creates a low-pressure zone that tries to suck in air from all directions. I suspect most people in a breezy environment would stand with the wind at their back, thinking that’s the best option, and getting a face full of smoke. Also since smoke rises and spreads out, even in a perfectly still environment you couldn’t stand close enough to a grill to work it and still be out of the smoke. Maybe if you crouched down and snuck in from the side, like a cat trying to swipe a morsel of food off the table, but that has its own dangers.
Indeed - and it only takes a few wisps of smoke in the face to feel it happening, so it’s not like these scenarios have to even result in a majority of the smoke coming your way - a little bit of smoke in your face is enough smoke in your face.
Comments about Murphy’s Law and checkout lines are amusing but unresponsive. The phenomenon is not confirmation bias, since it is being closely observed even as it is occurring. Admittedly, rigorous data collection is of secondary importance when compared to the proper charring of animal tissue on a charcoal fire, but further tests may yield solid numbers. Further reports may be forthcoming.
Wind doesn’t tend to blow in just one direction when there are structures and trees and terrain and stuff like that, and the smoke doesn’t linearly align with the wind direction, and the wind doesn’t care how your BBQ is oriented relative to it’s direction*. So only a very steady relatively light breeze whose major direction is perpendicular to a line between the BBQ and your eyes would not result in smoke in your eyes. And even then the vortices created at least briefly by opening the BBQ are likely to take smoke right into your eyes anyway.
Also, should we be referring to the wind by it’s proper name, which I believe is Maria? (sometimes Mariah I think)
*I should say we have no proof that the wind doesn’t care how your BBQ is oriented. I don’t think anybody has been able to rule that out as a possibility thought.
I am so tempted to rent a wind tunnel and demonstrate this…
Give in to the temptation. This profound question cries out for a serious, dedicated individual who will act as an objective observer and record the results.
Men generally do not enjoy cooking unless it is physically dangerous.
Only two posts in and he already figured us out!
My apologies- I know the rule in GQ is not to make a joke response until after there have been several serious replies, and it was pretty early on in the thread.
Thanks for saying the ‘amusing’ part though, I’ll take it 
I don’t have a studied answer, but I do have an educated guess. Even if the smoke was blowing equally in all directions, there’s one person who is closest to where the smoke is being generated and it’s the most concentrated–the person actually cooking on the grill.
And, even when they step away from the grill for a bit, they’ve been around it longer, and thus their eyes are likely already somewhat irritated by the smoke., making them more sensitive.
I must confess, somehow I didn’t notice it was in GQ, I assumed the OP was tongue-in-cheek.
Well, d’uh. It sorta was. And sorta wasn’t. You know?