I drove by an unfortunate skunk (who was quite a mess) and, as usual, I didn’t smell him until I was well past him. Is there something about the way the car’s vents are designed that accounts for the lag in smelling road-killed skunks? Something else?
It is not any special design of the vents, just the fact that the air moving from the vents into and through the car is moving more slowly than the car.
Suppose the skunk’s odor surrounds the body to a distance of 30 feet. At 45 miles per hour, it will take about a half second for the car to go from the outer edge of the odor zone to the skunk and another half second to leave the odor zone. Any air picked up in that time will get into the circulation system, but will be slowed down by the twists of the venting, so the air will not come rushing in at 45 mph. Thus, there is a bit of lag time between passing the skunk and smelling it.
Even if you’re in a convertible with the top down, getting to the skunk in a half second means that you pretty much have to be already past the body before the air will curl into the car, get into your nose, and make itself recognizable to you.
If skunks were much more aromatic and their odor permeated the air for hundreds of feet, you might smell it before you got to the body. (I have been in a car that was travelling directly upwind toward the skunk where I did smell it before I reached the body, but those conditions are rare.)
Ever notice that skunks smell like erasers?
I noticed this when I was a kid, ever since then when other people are like “eww, skunk” I’m like “hmm, eraser.” They don’t smell as bad when you realize they smell like an eraser.
Think about it next time you smell one. You won’t find the smell quite as bad anymore.
Smelly question, lets see if I can answer it.
I have only driven over a skunk once so far.
When I did I was driving a truckload of officers up a windy mountain road to an undisclosed radar site somewhere in the cascades. There was a cliff on one side of the turn and a skunk in my lane. Thinking faster than the skunk I hit it instead of swerving off the cliff to the right or into the on-coming lane to the left.
Keeping the truck on the road was my job as an airman first class. I thought I was the only one whose nose knew about the skunk. When all my passengers started rolling the windows down. And were silent the rest of the way up the mountain.
In my mind to get rid of the skunk smell I was singing" if my friends could only see me now".
Those officers should be happy I didn’t go over that cliff.
I hit a skunk dead on one night in the country and the smell got into my vehicle immediately. The smell lasted for several miles. I had to roll down the windows to air the car out.
I give skunks a wide berth now.
SP
Might also be that on a busy road all the cars going by create a wind in the direction of travel that skews the stench.
I guess it’s not the Doppler effect.
Hmmmm, maybe you’re on to something. I propose that skunk is at the upper end of our ability to smell. In fact, having such a short odor wavelength would easilly explain the sheer power of the skunk smell.
As you approach the dead skunk, the stence blue-shifts completely out of your olfactory range. It is only upon passing the skunk that the odor red-shifts back down to a wavelength that you can detect.