INHALE OZONE

No, Ozone is not some new stock that I'm encouraging you to buy. I did own Inhale, until it changed names (and subsequently stock symbols) to Nektar. It's been a moneymaker!

OK, way off-topic there. What I meant to talk about was a smell that I love. I don't really care for rain all too much, although I think it is bearable when it is periodic and light. The scent of rain and most strongly after the rain has passed is one of the most refreshing known to my senses. I've heard in the past that the smell I'm experiencing is actually Ozone. The wonderful double-doubly-bonded O3 molecule which is also a longtime tagword for environmental problems.

Can anyone confirm that this is the smell? Or is it really the residual tar and hydrocarbon solids evaporating from the asphalt surface?

This is what I think about while running up and down 4 flights of stairs doing laundry during a freak thunderstorm. It was so beautiful outside this morning, but to make it seem even more beautiful we were given crap weather this afternoon. The doppler map was strange because the storm was traveling in an uncharacteristic East-West direction. Weather patterns here almost always travel the other direction - off of the great big blue (gray) Pacific Ocean.