Pluviophiles celebrate the science and poetry of rain

My skin, body and general disposition don’t match summer.

This isn’t a menopausal thing, because it’s been that way since childhood.

Braais, beach and sunny skies are iconically South African, and I love all three.

But I wish that I didn’t crisp and age when the Celsius creeps past 20.

It makes drought and dry days difficult; and is probably the reason I’m a certified pluviophile.

Living where I do, on this (now) perennially hot and humid belt along the southern Cape coast, my geographical discomfort reached new heights after Christmas, given that “rain” is a rare and wondrous thing that brings us outdoors in ecstasies of delight when it actually falls beyond two-and-a-half minutes.

Pluviophiles, being lovers of rain, don’t pray for floods and watery destruction.

On the contrary: the point of pluvio-ing is to celebrate the life-giving properties of water falling from the sky in measured, but glorious, amounts.

Everything works better, for me, when it rains.

My Scot-red cheeks wind down to the pale flush of youth, long sleeves and generous knits hide middle-aged bulk, and my dry, wavy hair begins to curl, dew-like, into natural twists that look conditioned and expensive.

The smell after rain, too, is a treat.

Scientifically, we call the scent “petrichor”, and it’s lovely.

It promises new growth, avoidance of death (literally, in my garden) and a fresh start. Wet bricks and fat jewel drops on leaves are the stuff of poetry.

But, rain is also the stuff of science.

And according to www.sciencetimes.com, what I’m likely enjoying, after the rain, is the scent of bacteria.

These “actinomycetes” are a type of microbe growing in soil where there are damp and warm conditions, writes contributor Olive Marie.

When the soil has dried out, the bacteria apparently produces spores in the soil.

“The rainfall’s wetness and force kick up these tiny spores into the air, where moisture after rainfall functions as an aerosol [much] like the one acting in air freshener,” she says.

“The moist air easily takes the spores to us, and thus, we breathe them.

“Such spores have that distinctive, earthy smell [that] we typically link with rain.”

Also, says Marie, “rain smell” is essentially caused by a chemical that the germs emit as they die.

This “geosmin” is a type of alcohol molecule with an extremely strong smell.

It all sounds very tragic, and I wish that I hadn’t read that.

Still, it helps to be among a growing number of people who now openly admit to preferring thunderous clouds to blistering blue afternoons.

A website dedicated to people like us — www.pluviophile.net — indicates that it’ sa perfectly normal personality trait.

Interestingly, though, there’s no hard rocket science defining why some people thrive in wet conditions, and others don’t.

However, behavioural science lecturer Prof Paul Dolan, of the London School of Economics, is quoted as positing that humans connect emotionally with different weather patterns depending on what memories they trigger.

In that regard, he explains, rain may trigger happy memories for pluviophiles, and vice versa for beach babes.

I did love sunny days as a child, and swimming in rivers and such, but perhaps it really is because of my Scottish roots that I’m genetically predisposed to hot cocoa and biscuits under a blanket, brought to me by mum, the person I loved most in the world, come rain or shine.