# The smell of rain.

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-smell-of-rain/372494>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [September 13, 2006, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-smell-of-rain/372494 "2006-09-13T03:06:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![lizardling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f4b2a3/32.png) [@lizardling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lizardling)\
**Post date:** [September 15, 2006, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-smell-of-rain/372494/21 "2006-09-15T01:48:50Z")

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[QUOTE=Cervaise]  
Hippies.  
[/QUOTE]

Soda. Monitor.

I smell soda.

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**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\
**Post date:** [September 15, 2006, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-smell-of-rain/372494/22 "2006-09-15T01:58:59Z")

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Hippies. They’re everywhere. They wanna save the earth, but all they do is smoke pot and smell bad.

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**Author:** ![xbuckeye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9e8a1a/32.png) [@xbuckeye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xbuckeye)\
**Post date:** [September 15, 2006, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-smell-of-rain/372494/23 "2006-09-15T03:11:46Z")

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The traditional “smell of rain” is bacteria if you grew up in the country where there was no pavement. If you grew up in the city, you are smelling wet pavement, which smells more like sand than soil (sorry, that’s the best I can describe it). Ozone is only associated with lightning storms and then only smellable if the lightening is close…real close.

Being GQ, I’d love to provide a cite, but I can’t link you to a smell. I have worked in a laboratory with Streps and with ozone and I can tell you they smell nothing alike and smell nothing like wet pavement. If you have access to microbial media, you can plate a soil sample, isolate a Streptomycete and grow your own raingarden smell in a petri dish.

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**Author:** ![bob\_loblaw](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f19dbf/32.png) [@bob\_loblaw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_loblaw)\
**Post date:** [September 15, 2006, 10:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-smell-of-rain/372494/24 "2006-09-15T10:31:54Z")

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[QUOTE=garygnu]  
Hippies. They’re everywhere. They wanna save the earth, but all they do is smoke pot and smell bad.  
[/QUOTE]

that’s not fully true…

some of them smell worse.

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**Author:** ![Common\_Tater](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/common_tater/32/13846_2.png) [@Common\_Tater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Common_Tater)\
**Post date:** [September 15, 2006, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-smell-of-rain/372494/25 "2006-09-15T13:16:53Z")

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A subset is “that worm smell” in midwest suburbia. And, there are always squiggling worms on the sidewalk at least anecdotally.

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