The smell of rain has a name | Word of the Week

COMMENT: Rain – we’ve had a lot of it in parts of the Gunnedah district lately.

We are barely half through the month of August 2025 and already rainfall totals are more than double the August average.

According to the Bureau of Meteorology, the average rainfall for years between 2001-25 at the Gunnedah Airport recording station is 33.4mm. But already, Gunnedah had 72.8mm as of last week and there’s still some weeks to go this month.

It was a similar story last month as a total of 50.4mm fell during July at Gunnedah – far exceeding the mean total of 32.3mm.

This sparked a comment from Gunnedah Times graphic designer, Noel, who recalled an unusual word associated with the ongoing wet weather patterns – ‘petrichor’ – pronounced ‘PEH-trih-kor’.

According to the CSIRO, the word is used to describe the distinct scent of rain in the air. Or, to be more precise, it’s the name of an oil that’s released from the earth into the air before rain begins to fall.

The CSIRO continues, “This heady smell of oncoming wet weather is something most Australians would be familiar with – in fact, some scientists now suggest that humans inherited an affection for the smell from ancestors who relied on rainy weather for their survival.

“Even the word itself has ancient origins. It’s derived from the Greek ‘petra’ (stone) and ‘ichor’ which, in Greek mythology, is the ethereal blood of the gods.

“The smell itself comes about when increased humidity – a pre-cursor to rain – fills the pores of stones (rocks, soil, etc) with tiny amounts of water.

“While it’s only a minuscule amount, it is enough to flush the oil from the stone and release petrichor into the air. This is further accelerated when actual rain arrives and makes contact with the earth, spreading the scent into the wind. There is some evidence that drought-stricken cattle respond in a restless matter to this ‘smell of rain'”.

So next time you hear those first few rain drops, savour the smell of and remember to drop petrichor into your next scrabble scrimmage or morning coffee conversation.