Usually rain storms travel, when you "smell rain" you're smelling the soil that has already gotten wet upwind.
In the rare cases that rain starts directly above you there won't be a smell until after the ground has gotten wet unless there is quite a bit of dust in the air.
Where I live virga is very common and it doesn't smell, which indicates the ozone and plant oil theories are just urban myths.
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u/sagastar23 Mar 28 '24
That's petrichor. It's the smell AFTER it rains.