City rain smells of steaming asphalt, in contrast to the grassy sweetness of rain in the countryside. Ocean rain smells briny like Maine clam flats on a falling tide. In the desert of the southwestern United States, rare storms punch the atmosphere with creosote and sage. In the southeast, frequent squalls leave the damp freshness of a wet pine forest. “Clean but funky,” Thomas Wolfe called the exquisite scent of the American South.
Making Perfume From the Rain
Indian villagers have found a way to bottle the fragrance of monsoons
adapted from Cynthia Barnett’s book, Rain: A Natural and Cultural History.