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"Smells Like Rain?"

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Anonymous

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Earlier today at work, a co-worker of mine mentioned he thought it would rain based on the look of the sky. I disagreed; yet, driving home, it smelled like it might rain. I'm sure most of you can tell the same way. My question is, how dulled have our senses become over the ages, and how much did we rely on our senses for meteorological prediction in the past? If we "feel it in our bones" when the pressure changes as fronts move through, is this a throwback to a less scientific time? Can we re-train these senses to be as accurate as they might've been before?
 
I guess its just evolution that we have had our senses dulled, look at apes, they use smell on a daily basis but we only use it when we pass wind or when someones cooking our dinner. You would think our eyes would evolve better since we seem to use these more than sound and smell, who knows perhaps our eyes are ten times better than they used to be.
About being able to get our senses back, well thru surgery we might, i know there was a french company making hearing aids that are implants in your head that can make you hear 10 times better but are intended for deaf people but the guy who invented them said they can be used for people who arent deaf and improve your hearing so u could literally hear a pin drop. Improvements with sight and sound are just round the corner i feel and soon u wont be able to fart without everyone in a 10 mile radius hearing it.

Progress.
 
I get sharp pains in my head when there is thunder coming in, and can 'smell' incipent snow/sleet.

There is also a quility change in the light when foul weather is coming across the valley such that the distant hills seems very close. The guy who does my garden pointed it out to me, on a day that the sun was splitting the flagstones, with nary a cloud in the sky... 'when Wales stands up like that, and looks like a painted piece of scenery, we have bad weather coming, when its laid down its set for fine.' Two hours later the heavens opened and stayed like it for three days. It was like living on the set of BLadeRunner...

8¬)
 
When we lived in northern Nigeria, you could smell oncoming rain before it actually happened - it was a damp, earthy smell, quite distinctive. I suppose that's the sort of thing sensitive people can 'smell' and associate it with rain.

When my husband worked in Jakarta, there was a mild-ish earthquake and he said that just before, there was a change in the atmospheric pressure, which he could feel.

Carole
 
tang-malow said:
soon u wont be able to fart without everyone in a 10 mile radius hearing it.
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Some people I know seem to have that power already, tang:p

Carole
 
I love the air just before it snows -- you (or possibly just I..!) get that crisp, after-a-bonfire smell and the clouds take on a weird glow.. possibly my favourite weather.

Not that it snows that often in London, unless you're watching Bridget Jones' Diary...
 
Orbyn said:
I love the air just before it snows -- you (or possibly just I..!) get that crisp, after-a-bonfire smell and the clouds take on a weird glow.. possibly my favourite weather.

Not that it snows that often in London, unless you're watching Bridget Jones' Diary...
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...or Mary Poppins or Hook :)

8¬)
 
harlequin said:
...or Mary Poppins or Hook :)
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Always a very polished London in those films, with extremes of weather and Knightsbridge just a minute's walk away from some impoverished creative's leafy Notting Hill abode and kindly old Victorian-style characters on street corners, gawd bless yer guvnor....

'Course, it *is* actually like that.

(Looong day!)
 
i can tell if its going to rain cos i can clearly hear the little Falmouth to Truro train. which in good weather is almost inaudible... also the level of water in the loo goes down (due to lower pressure)..

In St Just they have a saying "if u can stand on Cape Cornwall and see Long Ships Lighthouse, its going to rain, If u cant see it, its already raining"
 
harlequin said:
'when Wales stands up like that, and looks like a painted piece of scenery, we have bad weather coming, when its laid down its set for fine.'
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Many places have their own local version of that, often followed by a cynical post-script:
I heard this in Plymouth:

"When you can see the Eddystone lighthouse clearly it's going to rain.

If you can't see it, it's already raining..."
 
After spending a significant part of my life (as a kid and now) on moorland I can tell/feel/smell the weather, usually 10/15 minutes before it happens. I always attract funny looks from my friends when I come up with "hmm, smells like rain'll come in from the north".

People have lost the ability to use their senses, no-one bothers to *look* around to see what's going on around them - to pick up the changes in budding, or the different colours of leaves.

I can even differentiate different trees from their smell, and between plants like gorse, heather (both when not in flower), growing bracken, different types of moss, and different moistures of peat, etc, etc,

I suppose we all have our talents :rolleyes:
 
It is easy to tell if it is going to rain - look what way the clouds are moving and see what is in the sky coming at you - so many people say it is going to pour down just because there is a black cloud overhead without realising there is a growing blue patch coming . Also just before very heavy rain the sky will lighten as the rain comes and people say look it is brighter over there , looks like it is clearing up , and then down comes the rain !
 
No there speaks someone who lives near a lot of flattish ground

8¬)
 
This thread is just a comment on modern life.

Very few people nowadays work outdoors for most of the day. Weather comes as a surprise to most moderns - they exit the office - "Oh, it's raining!" (shock, horror)

Weather forecasts have only been around for almost a century.

In the 19th century philanthropists started to sponsor public (mercury) barometers in fishng ports, to reduce the death-rate amongst the fisherfolk. In the 20th century we began to get radio forecasts. But as the 1987 UK hurricane proved, even those are not necessarily accurate.

(I know, I was a victim. And some people afterwards told me they recognized the unusual warm temperatures that night as a hurricane sign, but of course we don't get hurricanes here, do we...?)

People are sensitive to changes in air pressure, humidity, temperature, wind speed, and of course the sight of clouds in the sky. It's only our effete office-bound generation that has lost its weather understanding.
 
harlequin said:
No there speaks someone who lives near a lot of flattish ground

8¬)
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I certainly do ! Plus I look at the sky a lot - I fell down a hole once because I was looking at the moon LOL .
 
I don't know if Petrichor is what I can smell just before it rains; an acid sharp tang in the air like nothing else. It's actually, as best I can tell, the scent of water; I can sometimes smell it near a waterfall or fountain. Fresh and Crisp.

Mayby I'm more sensetive to it than others; I'm supposed to be elementally aligned with water.

Niles "whata elemental" Calder
 
A friend of mine who is a doctor claims that a schizophrenic person in crisis smells 'ozoney', like the whiff of a working photocopier, and he speculated that it might be due to the massive electrical chaos of the brain during 'breakdown'. He's not the only medic I've heard say this, either. Anyone comment?
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I remember reading that some active schizophrenics produce DMT in thier urine (naturally present in every human body and a very potent psychedelic in quantity, but not normally found in urine). I doubt that this would account for an odor but maybe both factors relate to some anomolous body chemistry (???).
 
Niles Calder said:
I don't know if Petrichor is what I can smell just before it rains; an acid sharp tang in the air like nothing else. It's actually, as best I can tell, the scent of water; I can sometimes smell it near a waterfall or fountain. Fresh and Crisp.
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Waterfalls, etc, are supposed to put (negative?) ions into the air. Thermal updraughts that create clouds also ionize the air - this is seen at its most extreme when thunderclouds, cumulo-nimbus, build up, and produce not just rain or hail but electrical storms.

Some people are more sensitive to electricity than others, so perhaps people who 'smell rain' are really smelling electricity.
 
I can smell imminent rain, like Niles said it's that acidy tang in the air. Most of all though, I feel it -- I get a rheumatic ache in my left shoulder for a couple of hours before rain, the stronger the pain the heavier the rain will be. It normally sets in, as I said, two to three hours before the rain starts.

Experiment time - right now(9.10 am GMT) here in Bristol, it's a pretty much a clear sky, a few light grey clouds on the western horizon, quite breezy. I'm on the east side of the city, about seven miles from the coast. I know rain is forecast for later on, but I have no ache in my shoulder as yet: in this neck of the woods forecast rain occasionally misses us, being on the western coast we sometimes get overshot, as it were.

I will post regularly through today with updates: watch this space!

stu neville, the anatomical weatherman
 
9.49 GMT - left shoulder starting to twinge slightly. Reckon rain will be here by 1.00 ish.
 
10.55 - shoulder hurting quite a bit - clouding over quite rapidly and wind picking up.

I should add this isn't psychosomatic - it works when I've got the curtains drawn and haven't seen a forecast too!
 
Sorry - got caught up elsewhere. Has been raining now since about 1.30 - light, but persistent.

Shoulder aching a bit more - think it'll get heavier soon.
 
rynner said:
People are sensitive to changes in air pressure, humidity, temperature, wind speed, and of course the sight of clouds in the sky. It's only our effete office-bound generation that has lost its weather understanding.
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I've never spent a whole day in an office in my life! A couple of hours at most, and it's always someone else's office...
 
What's snow?

Is it that odd white stuff that covers the pavement for about 25 minutes every other January, in between bouts of rain?
 
You've edited it, IJ!

My last post makes even less sense than usual, now!
 
25 minutes every other January? You mean the stuff that comes up to your knees for most of December and occassionally pays flying visits as late as march?
 
Inverurie Jones said:
25 minutes every other January? You mean the stuff that comes up to your knees for most of December and occassionally pays flying visits as late as march?
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Not round here, mate.

Mind you, my missus is from Blackburn, where they occasionally experience light flurries in May; I jumped out of my socks when I saw that. The assorted in-laws were more interested in my reaction than the prevailing conditions...
 
You mean you can't make snowmen? Or have snowball fights? Or go sledging? Is Christmas always rainy? Ugh! How awful!
 
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