The “Little Stinker” Behind the Smell of Desert Rain

Where it rains very little, you learn to be attuned to any sign the weather could turn wet—any sign that relief is imminent. Gray clouds move in, dimming the sky. The air thickens. A roll of thunder rumbles in the distance. But above all, there’s the smell.In West Texas, especially, you know rain is headed your way long before the first fat drops spot the sidewalks and pockmark the sand. I remember it wafting through the screen door into our family’s living room in El Paso. I could smell it from the couch where I would be watching TV with my brothers. “Gonna rain,” one would mutter without turning his head from the screen. My dad would take a dramatic, comically deep inhale. “Smell that?!”…

The post The “Little Stinker” Behind the Smell of Desert Rain appeared first on Texas Monthly.