America here... can you guys smell the rain???

I just watched a reel (I call them all SnapToks) of a person from another country who was excited that he could smell the rain... is that seriously an American thing?

There's a kind of fresh scent that you sometimes get in the air after a shower but not sure it's something to get excited about. I assumed it could happen anywhere with any shower and I am pretty sure I've noticed it when traveling (I am rather well traveled as North Americans go).

Yes. I can smell the aroma of moistening humus and organic material, and of course we can smell the ozone generated by lightning that is close by.

Petrichor?

IDK if it’s an American thing but it is definitely a thing. When I lived in Pacific Northwest and the rain was a light steady, unthreatening mist for a few months at a time, it wasn’t usually as noticeable.

But here in the Midwest, we get a lot of no-fucking-around weather, and Mother Nature can kill you any day of the year if you’re not careful. People were killed by tornadoes in Illinois and Indiana just this week, for example, and it’s likely the blizzards hitting the Great Lakes right now will take lives. Those hazards also include big scary-ass thunderstorms, and yes you often can smell the ions in the air before it rains as well as during.

There is a scientific basis for this, so unlike a lot of things going on in my country, it is not a mass delusion. Heavily ionized air (or is that ozone?), as caused by strong rainstorms, especially those with a lot of electrical energy, has a very distinctive scent. We are not making this up.