Woman reveals why Europeans can't smell rain while Americans can, sparking debate

Petrichor, the smell that accompanies the first rain is a popular scent in quite a few cultures. Many people around the world also term it as their favorite scent. But it isn't a scent known to every person in the world and might have a cultural significance. A woman—who goes by @yvanabee on TikTok shared—why Europeans can't smell the rain while Americans can and the very specific reason behind the phenomenon. It is fascinating that the ability to recognize scents could be associated with a culture.

The creator made a stitch with a man called Joe Anybody who pointed out, "Europeans can't understand why Americans could smell rain." The man looked quite surprised by the revelation. "This is actually true," the woman continued from there. "Let me explain. I am Mauritian and Italian and when I first started getting American friends I noticed that my American friends were smelling more things than I was." She added, "Like they were more in tune with the scents around them. I call it scent culture but it actually went further than that." The woman once went to a store with one of her American friends. "We were smelling candles and before she even read the name of the candle she smelled it and said this reminds me of spring cut grass," she recounted.

"I thought to myself, what does spring cut grass smell like?" the woman wondered. "If you asked me if cutting grass had a scent I would tell you yes but intellectually, I would not know what it was." She shared how she has smelled fresh-cut grass before, she doesn't have an association with smell and grass. "At least I didn't link the two together. The same is true for seasons of the year," the person went on. "When I first met my husband he told me he really liked a specific candle that we found in a store. He told me it smells like fall." The woman didn't know what fall smelled like for two reasons. One there was no fall in her region and the second thing is that people in her home country aren't that candles and scent-obsessed.

"At least I wasn't in the past, now I am. So whenever I heard an American say this smells like Christmas, or this smells like summer or this smells like fall, I was like, what are you talking about," she expressed. Now, the woman knows that there are scents associated with fall, summer and Christmas. "That doesn't mean that Europeans or people from other parts of the world don't know what grass smells like," the person clarified. "It just seems like there's a list of links between the scent of something and the thing." The woman's association with scents has since changed but she still doesn't have as many scent associations as Americans do. She felt that it is true that most people in other countries can smell things like rain but don't really pay as much attention to it as the Americans do."

People in the comments section had mixed opinions about the topic. @thegenialheart wrote, "The smell of rain - petrichor - varies in different areas of the US as well. Desert rain in the southwest has a very distinct smell." @gleeppa commented, "Everybody can smell rain! North of Sweden and you feel it in the air, it’s called petrichor." @inspaceandtime remarked, "Snow has a smell too! And we get nostalgic over smells that remind us of childhood, too. A certain meal that your grandparents always made…Scented markers, or school supplies and pencils, etc." 

You can follow @yvanabee on TikTok for more lifestyle content.