Why Did Eastern Iowa & Western Illinois Smell Awful This Week?
It was stinky in the QCA.
Earlier this week, I nearly choked when I walked out of my apartment in Davenport. The smell was awful. I thought a sewer line had burst, it smelled so bad.
Over the day, people in the ever-entertaining "What's Going On, Quad Cities?" Facebook page kept asking about the smell and the Quad Cities subreddit was trying to figure it out too.
It Wasn't A Sewer Line
As the National Weather Service Quad Cities told WQAD: it was the farmers.
The harvest season makes for some interesting atmosphere moments. In my home state, rice farmers burn their fields after the harvest, resulting in an ongoing smoke cloud for weeks on end.
Here, experts say the smell this week was caused by farmers spraying fertilizer on their fields and winds being from the north/northwest carried that sweet aroma right into the QCA.
What I love about this is that Iowa is lowkey getting the blame. The winds carried the smell all the way to Missouri and southern Illinois, and it seems they're pinning it on Iowa's cattle and hog farms for making it worse:
As the front moved through the region, wind directions shifted and went through cattle and hog farms in Iowa and Nebraska. Late-season cold fronts that shift the region's wind are somewhat common during the fall.
Sorry we're stinky.
But hey, the smell of fertilizer means money for the farmers. And the good news for us, it shouldn't last too long if it's still lingering around your area.
Quad Cities Pumpkin Patches
Gallery Credit: Connor Kenney/Townsquare Media Quad Cities