***Official 2023 Weather Thread***
- Thread starter wxman1
- Start date
Plenty of "corn sweat" coming. Being in Wisconsin I keep hearing this term, especially from weather people on the local stations.
Growing up I remember this time of year when the humidity and heat would have the corn making noise in the night. "You can hear it growing!"
But never heard of corn sweat in Iowa. What is it?
KidSilverhair
Well-Known Member
Fun thing I had seen a few times when I lived in the midwest: the corn grows so fast overnight that the chlorophyll isn't fully developed in the newest leaves so that when you see them in the morning they appear as mostly white leaves at the top of each plant in the field. It's a strange sight.
Someone with more ag experience can weigh in on this in case I've completely misunderstood and that's not actually what's happening.
Sounds like normal late July weather. I think this summer has been pretty mild so far. Haven't had many 90 degree days. Late May and early June was one of the best 3-4 weeks stretches I can remember.
Ames hit 90 once in the month of June. Was in upper 80s a handful of times, but all in all, it was still a mild month.
We were suffering in WI in April-May but we had lows in the 40s and highs in the 70s recently. We have been spared as has much of Iowa on average.
Never heard of it before, so I did a quick search. As @KidSilverhair said, it's called evapotranspiration.
'Corn sweat' in the Midwest can cause some of the most oppressive humidity in the US
A phenomenon known as "corn sweat" can combine with summertime heat in the Midwest to make for some unbelievably humid conditions.
www.foxweather.com
Corn (or any plant) pulls moisture out of the soil, and some of that moisture escapes through the corn's leaves and enters the surrounding air. This is called transpiration.
Just as humans sweat, or perspire, to cool down, plants are no different. The higher the air temperature, the more the plant will sweat, or transpire.
The transpired moisture will then evaporate off the plant's leaves to cool it down, just like how sweat evaporates off human skin. Evaporation is a cooling process.
I'm nearly positive we had a discussion about corn sweat on CF last summer when discussing the humidity.
WHO said 95 and humid on Wednesday next week. One day registered for RAGBRAI on Wednesday. FML!! Plus first RAGBRAI ride for the majority of our group. I know of at a least three that will not make it to the end.
Lack of humidity has been great this summer. Don't know if temps have been any cooler than recent years, but it definitely has felt milder. No mosquitos for the most part too.
That link isn't quite right. Transpiration is the process by which plants put water vapor in the air from the soil. Evapotransipration is a combination of the words evaporation and transpiration as we often lump the two together when modeling the water cycle in an area.
https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics...e/evapotranspiration-and-water-cycle#overview
