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People are always claiming to be able to do things that seem weird, or even impossible. This could include anything from having the ability to read past lives to being able to smell snow, and anything in between.
While lots of these claims can be dismissed as silly, some of them are actually real.
The claim to be able to smell snow might have something to it according to science.
In 2022 there was an interview conducted with Johan Lundstrom, who is a professor of clinical neuroscience and a ‘smell researcher’ at the Monelle Chemical Senses Center. In the interview, he talked about how snow is able to connect compounds from the air or even the ground where it landed.
As the snow falls, it can collect things like gasses, small particulates, and other contaminants, all of which can contribute to it having a scent to those with a strong enough sense of smell. In areas where there is a lot of contamination in the air, the scent of the snow can seem even stronger.
For this reason, someone who can smell snow will likely notice that the snow that comes down in the middle of a big city will have a different odor than that which fell in the middle of the woods.
Another potential explanation for being able to smell snow is that it is actually that the person making the claim is noticing the lack of an odor.
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Everyone has noticed that in the springtime when the flowers are starting to bloom and plants are growing, the world has a fresh scent to it. There are multiple reasons for this including the fact that the warmth in the air triggers various compounds to be released and that people are moving from the cold sterile winters and into to the spring, so the smells have changed.
While warm weather causes smells to intensify, the cold minimizes them. This can be very obvious on a farm. During the summer, the smell of manure and animals is very strong, but even though the animals and their droppings are still there in the winter, the smell is much more muted.
So, some people suggest that the smell of snow is actually just the person taking note of a lack of smell. Normally they detect the smell of the world around them, but when taking a whiff of the cold snow, no actual odor is present, which their brain interprets as a smell of its own.
Whatever the case, many people love the calm and quiet of a freshly fallen snow, whether they can actually smell it or not.
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