When it rains in the past after a very long time of dryness, the people of old believe the rain is a blessing to them and the gods used it to cleanse their land. In other cases, some people believe the rain is a sign for them to end a war between two community or clans.
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But how true is this? What do you think or how do you feel when it rains?
While it was raining yesterday I remembered a girl that lived next to me 10 years ago. She loves sitting outside whenever it is raining and sometimes when it stops raining she would take a walk.
One day while it was raining, I was inside my room when I heard her mum complaining that she doesn't know why someone will bring her food outside to eat while it's raining, then she said that there's this particular smell she perceived some time ago when it rained that she always look forward to it. Her mum sighed, and I was wondering what the smell is, but I didn't give it any attention.
Last year in school I was at the cafe with one of my course mate to make an online payment, but we didn't meet the guy in charge of online payments. While we were waiting, my course mate made a post on her social media handle: what is that weird smell you love? And in the comment section there were lots of answers but the one that caught my attention was the one about the smell of wet sand after the rain stops. When I got home I decided to do a research and I discovered that that smell is called petrichor.
What is petrichor?
According to The Oxford English Dictionary, petrichor is a pleasant smell frequently accompanying the first rain after a long period of warm dry weather in certain regions. I interviewed different people on how the earth smells after Rain, but I got different answers and this made me more curious. So I decided to read more about petrichor and I came across an article by Kathryn whitbourne, 2020, and she reported that the smell people associate with rainstorms can be caused by number of things. Kathryn reported that bacteria and the acidity of rain causes petrichor.
My findings
During my course of studying, I found out that:
You cannot smell petrichor everytime it rains
Dry conditions initiate the production of oils, spores and geosmin
Rain smell is caused by a chemical in bacteria called Geosmin which is released by the bacteria as they die, and that bacteria is called Acitomycetes
Some persons believe that the petrichor syndrome is heritable i.e., it was inherited from their fore fathers.
Thanks for reading!
