Sweet Syrupy Smell, I Wish I Knew How To Quit You!

If we spent as much time investigating . . . oh, never mind — that weird syrup smell is much, much more interesting:

New Jersey has been accused of many things, and almost none have had to do with smelling sweet.

But when a strange, syrupy scent descended on parts of New York City and New Jersey twice (and possibly three times) in the fall, theories spread faster than warm Aunt Jemima on pancakes. Speculation fell on the Garden State, a historic center in the production of fragrance, flavor and hoary olfaction jokes.

. . .

The evidence appears to be mounting: the earliest recorded calls for the October incident came not from New York, but from New Jersey. And a recent odor pocket was noticed by several people in Hoboken.

And finally, the Times has some intriguing data that may push forward several new theories:

The smell came on at least two dates: Oct. 27 and Dec. 8, both Thursdays, in the late afternoon or early evening.

On both days, the barometric pressure was high, and the wind was blowing lightly from the west, about 10 miles an hour or less, according to data compiled by the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University.

Climate experts say that these atmospheric conditions often prompt what is called an inversion, a phenomenon common to the late fall and winter in New York that keeps pollution trapped at low altitudes.

Call logs for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection show that on Oct. 27, the first recorded complaints came from parts of New Jersey. A third occurrence of the smell came on Dec. 15, also a Thursday, when Hoboken residents who had noticed the odor previously claimed they smelled it again.

So Thursdays are important, New Jersey is important — the question is what? The Times goes further — into Jersey itself — to investigate:

Government agencies said that they do not believe the scent is dangerous and that they did not receive any complaints that day, but a spokesman for the city environmental protection agency said the current theory is that it most likely came from New Jersey.

“It’s food processing,” said Charles Sturcken, a spokesman for the city’s environmental protection agency.

Mr. Sturcken said that this was “based on common judgment of our air inspectors,” and that “things do drift over often from Jersey.”

After visiting several fragrance facilities, the smell couldn’t be pinpointed to any one source (“From afar, the air smelled faintly sweet, like strawberry. Through the gates and into the parking lot, the smell became muskier, until at the front door, an earthy scent could be detected, like ginseng.”). New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection is also investigating. Meanwhile, the data keeps coming in:

On Dec. 8, Erich Rastetter said, he was driving home to New York from flying lessons in Lincoln Park, N.J., when he was hit by the smell on Route 80 near Teaneck.

“It was really cold that day, and I had the heat on full blast,” said Mr. Rastetter, a computer network administrator who lives on Ninth Avenue in Manhattan and also detected the smell in October. “I remember this blast of really sweet, really strong smell, and I kind of smiled and it kind of came together, that it was the smell.”

He said he opened the windows of his car to make sure it wasn’t coming from inside. “It only lasted like two or three minutes,” he said. “As soon as I went past that roll in the road, it started disappearing fairly quickly.”