They say that the sense of smell is the one out of the five senses that people remember the most. Just one whiff of a certain smell, whether it’s good or bad, and your mind can take you back immediately to a time in your life.
For me, it’s always the smell that sometimes happens just before and just after a thunderstorm. Just about everybody can smell it, as long as you have a fairly good sense of smell, and it’s a smell you never forget.
But what causes this? Well, when a thunderstorm is rumbling towards your area one thing that you’ll notice first is the sound of thunder and the lightning in the distance. This is a lot of electrical charge in the air as the thunderstorms move in creating a lot of static electricity.
This static eventually becomes lightning and it’s this charge that is being smelled. After the storm moves through, there’s a totally different smell.
This is a “clean” smell in the air. The reason behind this is because if it’s been a while since the last rainfall, all kinds of fumes, exhaust and other impurities have been building up in the air without you realizing it.
When the rain comes down, it cleans it all up leaving a fresh atmosphere that smells just a bit different.