The Air (Dallas, Austin, Luling: apartment, school, floor)

[oldtoiletsmkgdflrpots]

The air stinks. It's stale like when you wash a jar out and then open the lid a few months later. What is making the air smell so bad?

[Trainwreck20]

Probably mold and decaying dirt due to high moisture for MONTHS now and a freeze/warm cycle to kill some plants and then let them rot.

Can't say for sure, as I don't smell it. I think it is oak pollen season starting? Maybe not...

[TexasHorseLady]

I remember when I first came to Austin to attend UT, riding back to Austin from Dallas on Sunday nights lying on the floor of a VW bus, I could tell when we were near to Austin because it smelled so wonderful and fresh - it had its own delightful aroma that contrasted with the stench that was Dallas.

No longer.

[riaelise]

dampness. the soil in general. in our case, brushy creek stinks sometimes.

[ashbeeigh]

Could be Lulling too. I bet it just sits in the moist air. https://www.kxan.com/news/natural-ga...368/1031452709

[TexasHorseLady]

Luling has been like that since at least the 1990's when I used to board my horses in Niederwald and drive to Luling for BBQ. It's a very distinctive odor easily identifiable as gas.

[Trainwreck20]

Originally Posted by TexasHorseLady

Luling has been like that since at least the 1990's when I used to board my horses in Niederwald and drive to Luling for BBQ. It's a very distinctive odor easily identifiable as gas.

H2S and other sulfur compounds. It is actually MUCH better than it was in the 70s and 80s.

[ScoPro]

Originally Posted by TexasHorseLady

Luling has been like that since at least the 1990's when I used to board my horses in Niederwald and drive to Luling for BBQ. It's a very distinctive odor easily identifiable as gas.

During her senior year at SWT in the spring of 1967, my fiancé (now wife) did her student teaching at Luling Elementary. She stayed with a sorority sister in a garage apartment in town, and 20’ from their door in the back yard was an operating pump jack. That whole county stunk like Jett Rink after his gusher came in. Lot of sulfur in that Luling crude.

It didn’t help matters when an arsonist burned the school to the ground over one weekend.

[Ivory Lee Spurlock]

Where does the air stink in Austin other than the landfill in far SE Austin? I'm outside nearly everyday and in all parts of Austin. I never smell any foul odor in the air. Sometimes the air is thick with humidity but it doesn't smell. At least if it does, I never noticed it. Now that I think about it, I don't remember ever hearing anybody complain about the way Austin smells. That's a new one.

[Trainwreck20]

Downtown has always smelled like downtown to me - some hard-to-describe urban smell. The ambient smell outside of downtown hasn't noticeably change for me that I can tell over the last 40 years or so, though - pollen, grass, cedar, whatever is in season .

Now, VISUALLY, the air is much worse over DT than it used to be. The summer of 1982 I would drive in every morning down 360 and cross the 'new' Pennybacker bridge, and there was not a hint of smog over the city on most days. Bright, crystal blue sky as opposed to the omnipresent haze that is there now. Oh, and I think there was one traffic light on 360 and I would literally see a handful of cars on the road - 5 or 6 - the entire length of 360 that I drove.