Printed from smellbook.com/smells/snow-cold-air. This printout keeps the entry for Snow / Cold Air itself: its description, reference card, Connections, questions, evidence, related smells, record details, states, names and citation. It leaves out your own notes, the map, the lists of paths, routes, stories and fragrance directions, and the lists headed “Also linked to” (other entries that share its place or material) and “Linked from”; they are on the page online. The entries this one links to are still printed under Connections and Related smells.
Categories and types group entries for browsing; they are editorial, not evidence. How smells are grouped.
Also known as Cold Winter Air
A very cool, clean and sparse outdoor smell experience associated with snow and cold air.
Cold air and fresh snow smell clean, sparse and sharp, as though the air has been rinsed of other smells. EDITORIAL
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Links SmellBook records for this entry: what was written about it and related smells. EDITORIAL links are chosen by SmellBook editors and HISTORICAL links describe what one source wrote at one time. Nothing here is a ranking.
QUESTIONS ABOUT SNOW / COLD AIR
Cold air and fresh snow smell clean, sparse and sharp, as though the air has been rinsed of other smells. There is a faint mineral, almost metallic edge and a crisp coolness that stings the nose. The sensation can feel more like an absence than a presence, with distant woodsmoke or pine standing out against it. It is easily confused with the clean smell of ice or of frosty mornings.
It appears during and just after snowfall, on cold clear mornings in winter, and in mountain air at altitude. Stepping out of a warm house into freezing air is one of the most recognisable moments.
Typical settings: snowfall, cold morning, mountain air.
SmellBook has VERIFIED historical evidence for this entry: The smell of snow in a 1926 memoir. It records what was written without stating the time described; it is not a scientific finding or a scientific explanation of why it smells.
No VERIFIED scientific claim is recorded for this entry yet.
This is an atmospheric perception profile rather than a claim that snow has one intrinsic odor.
Words that are easy to mix up: Is fresh the same as clean?
One historical source describes it. It describes a time it does not state, no later than its publication, not the present: see its date in Connections; the sources are with the evidence below.
VERIFIED evidence links it to Maine.
Answers marked EDITORIAL are written by SmellBook editors to describe the experience and add no scientific fact. Answers marked VERIFIED point to claims on published sources, checked against each source's own summary where one was available (each claim's page says how); what each claim supports is in its own text and scope.
VERIFIED · HISTORICAL means SmellBook checked what one historical text records, not whether it was true or what this smell is like today.
Historical evidence · 1 claim
The smell of snow in a 1926 memoir
In her 1926 memoir Adobe Days, Sarah Bixby Smith names the smell of snow in the air among the odours she learned on childhood visits to Maine, together with pine trees in winter, a woodshed and barn and a long-lived-in old house.
A memoir published in 1926 recalling the author's childhood; it records her memory, not a measurement, and does not say what the smell is.
How this was found: Historical text. A published historical text, read on a digitised page; it records what was written when it was published. Source: historical record.
Passage: p. 35. Published 1926, the latest time it can describe; not the present.
Sarah Bixby Smith
Links chosen by SmellBook editors, not a ranking.
Associations can vary strongly by person, place and culture.
PATHS FROM HERE
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WHERE THIS SMELL APPEARS
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FOR RESEARCHERS AND EDITORS
Identity, revision history, corrections and how to cite Snow / Cold Air.
CULTURAL: This entry's associations depend on context, language, memory or culture; its description and smell words are editorial. It says nothing about research or historical evidence; evidence for this entry is shown separately: VERIFIED · HISTORICAL.
How this entry is identified and named, for citing it or matching it with other records.
SmellBook SB-0063 — Snow / Cold Airsmellbook:smell:snow-cold-airhttps://smellbook.com/smells/snow-cold-airSmellBook. (2026). Snow / Cold Air (revision 4, 2026-10-06). SmellBook Public Atlas. smellbook:smell:snow-cold-air. https://smellbook.com/smells/snow-cold-air@misc{smellbook_snow_cold_air_r4,
author = {{SmellBook}},
title = {Snow / Cold Air},
year = {2026},
note = {SmellBook Public Atlas, revision 4, 2026-10-06, smellbook:smell:snow-cold-air},
url = {https://smellbook.com/smells/snow-cold-air}
}TY - ENCYC ID - smellbook-snow-cold-air-r4 TI - Snow / Cold Air AU - SmellBook T2 - SmellBook Public Atlas PY - 2026 DA - 2026/10/06 ET - revision 4 UR - https://smellbook.com/smells/snow-cold-air N1 - SB-0063; smellbook:smell:snow-cold-air; resolver https://smellbook.com/id/smell/snow-cold-air ER -
The citation names revision 4 of 2026-10-06, so a reader can tell exactly which version was cited. Citing records what was read; it does not grant a licence.
This is an atmospheric perception profile rather than a claim that snow has one intrinsic odor.
Other entries whose editors linked to Snow / Cold Air:
Editorial description expanded to answer what it smells like and where you meet it; independently reviewed.
Created 2026-09-22 · Updated 2026-10-06Dataset history In the SmellBook dataset since the first of three dataset releases of 2026-09-30.
No correction notices published for this entry. Corrections policyEVIDENCE MATTERS
SmellBook separates cultural association, community perception, verified evidence, prediction and experimental relationships rather than presenting them as the same thing. Read the evidence guide ↗ See the evidence coverage report ↗