What's that smell? Baltimore area residents wake up to stinky odor.
BALTIMORE -- What's that smell? Baltimore-area residents are trying to figure out what that not-so-pleasant stench was on Wednesday morning.
"I was like, 'Wow, it smells like poop out here,'" Hampden resident Johnnie Simpson said.
"It smelled like something had died," said Dan Allen, who lives in Hampden.
Hampden residents woke up to a stinky odor.
"When I came out to get the mail from yesterday, because I hadn't checked it, it just hit me like a wave," Simpson said.
"You immediately noticed it upon leaving the house, and at first I thought something was under my porch, but then we walked a block or two and kept smelling it," Allen added.
"This smells different"
Any thoughts of the smell being a localized issue were trashed with one look on social media.
The smell was reported throughout the area -- from Riverside and Federal Hill to Guilford, Pikesville, Cockeysville, Mount Vernon, Ruxton, Towson, and so on.
"That's wild, something really big must have died," Allen said.
"I've smelled like what I thought were sewer leaks before, but this was different," Simpson said. "This smells different to me."
The answer
The Maryland Department of Environment said the smell in Baltimore was caused by a weather inversion of everyday pollutants becoming slightly concentrated and trapped in the atmosphere.
And while it might reek, it's not dangerous.
"It was very profound, really gross, it made me immediately turn around and walk back in the house," Simpson said. "I was like, 'Nope, I'm not going anywhere right now.'"
"Living in any neighborhood, you get little adventures. At least this gives us something to talk about," Allen said.
The smell seemed to have subsided by Wednesday afternoon, leaving behind nothing but a gross memory.