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Joined:  Jan 2001 
Posts: 1,819  
Pooh-Bah 
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 Pooh-Bah 
Joined:  Jan 2001 
Posts: 1,819  | 
Ah now there's a word to describe something I've always loved and never had a word for! I wonder if there is a word for the smell in the air that precedes rain. Around here in the summer sometimes it smells just like the nearby Elkhorn Creek just before a rain. 
  Getting back to petrichor, the smell that comes with rain is probably very different in the city than it is in the countryside. And yet I like the urban smell of fresh rain on hot, dusty, oily streets. What do they call that --  petrolichor I imagine.
 
  
 
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Joined:  Jan 2001 
Posts: 13,858  
Carpal Tunnel 
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Carpal Tunnel 
Joined:  Jan 2001 
Posts: 13,858  | 
According to Quinion,It was named by two Australian researchers in an article in Nature in 1964, 
  And I have the impression that it occurs only under very special conditions that none of us are likely to encounter.
 
  
 
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Joined:  Sep 2000 
Posts: 2,891  
Carpal Tunnel 
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Carpal Tunnel 
Joined:  Sep 2000 
Posts: 2,891  | 
I think it is pretty common Bill.  I've always noticed a distinct scent after a rainfall.  Different depending upon where I am, the type of rainfall and the time of year.
  I don't like the term though, generally it's a nice scent (apart from spring-time in the city which just smells like exposed and melting dog poop) and petrichor doesn't do it justice.
  I think it's the "ich" which sounds like "ICK" a sound of disgust.
 
 
 
  
 
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