When you bought the house, you should have been apprised by your lawyer about any potential problems in the area. Perhaps, there is a sewage treatment plant nearby and so when the wind blows your way, you get it in full force. If that is the case, there is nothing you can do about it. If you did not have a lawyer and did not do your own due diligence, then there is still nothing you can do about it. If you rent, then, tough luck, you did not do any due diligence. Put up with it until your lease is over and then move.

It could also be a dairy or cattle farm nearby. We drive nearer to the sewage treatment plant or by the dairy or cattle farm on occasion. All stink to high heaven within miles of them.

I rented a house years ago that had a backed up sewer between the house I rented and the house next door. My bathtub filled with sewer water to the brim. A plumber located the problem nearer to the neighbor's house, along the sidewalk. It did not even stink up the house. The color was ghastly but, the smell was not that bad. I doubt that your problem is a backed up sewer. My nose is extremely acute. I wish my eyesight was as good.

Could be flowering skunk cabbage. I grew up near a creek and they grow near the water. It is a green cabbage looking wild plant that flowers into a lime colored callalily-like flower. These are generally most fragrant in the cooler hours, which would explain the timing of the stench. If the smell was all the time, my guess would be marijuana, since it has an almost skunky smell when in large concentrations. I have family that live in a town that smells like skunk due to the plants in the surrounding woods...But being the specific timing of the smell I would say it's something else.

A neighborhood with very good houses was built close to a guy that raised pigs. When the wind blew from his direction, the smell of the pigs went to the neighborhood. The people took the guy to court and the judge told the people that the man was there before they were and they knew he was there and the man with the pigs won the case. I smelled the pigs when I was visiting someone there.

Then there's skunk pot. Some people down wind from you might be smoking the pot. I smelled it when I was in a parking lot in some apartments and I asked someone what the horrible smell was and someone told me.

There might be a meth house close by. They can smell like old chicken poop. My husband and I cut a man's grass for him and there was a terrible smell from the house next door. They had chickens and I thought the yard needed cleaning and there might be a dead chicken. Later it was discovered the house was a meth house. It was torn down. There's a law here that a meth house can not be sold and it has to be torn down because people get sick in a meth house. The meth gets in the walls and everything.

The only thing I get like that is skunks passing in the night. But I'm not delicate and just accept it as a fact of life. I'm sorry to have to tell you this but it will be getting worse. Wild animals are adapting to city life, even Black Bears. You may have to relocate to some animal free safe zone to escape them.

There's probably something around that smells and you only get the smell when the wind blows it your way. Wind often changes direction at night. I live close to a farm with cattle, but hardly ever get a smell from them in the daytime in summer because the wind in the daytime blows towards the farm. Check around the neighbourhood and you'll probably find the source of the smell.

what you are describing is a backed up sewer........is there some large building in the area that might be flushing all its poo at once at night?

This is a health hazard..call your local health department, government office, and the Public Works department.

Have all your neighbors do, too.One person calling is maybe a crank. 10 calling is a Public Health Hazard

Sounds like a sewer problem...

could be your septic tank or a backed up sewer

We just moved into a new neighborhood and every night around 10 to 11pm, my entire neighborhood starts stinking. We can't open our windows or run our air conditioning or else it gets in, and it's EXTREMELY oppressive and it causes me and other members of my family to have headaches and dizziness at it's worse. I think it smells like my cat's poop but a friend of mine said it reminded him of skunk. If it were a skunk, would that result in blocks and blocks of the neighborhood smelling, for hours on end, at the same time every day for a week?

I have no idea what is causing this smell and I don't even know how to begin research. Is there a way to find out if certain factories funnel their exhaust into my neighborhood? I also live near a creek, a wooded area and a train-track. Does anyone have experience with anything like this?