ALLTHINGS NEBRASKA
We appear to be done bombing Iran, and to be back to helping Ukraine repeal invaders from Russia. Plus, it looks like the trade war we started is going to raise our cost of buying coffee from Brazil and beer from Mexico.
Great, huh? So maybe it’s time to talk about something really important— corn sweat.
We’re entering the peak of corn sweat season, when the thick, green fields of corn that blanket eastern and central Nebraska start to emit their highest levels of moisture. It’s called “evapotranspiration,” according to Eric Hunt, an agriculture meteorologist with the University of Nebraska Extension Service.
One acre of corn can transpire or sweat 3,000 to 4,000 gallons of water a day. That can up the dew point by a sticky 5 to 10 degrees, turning a 90-degree day into a soggy slog that feels like 100.
(To be fair, concrete and asphalt parking lots and roads in cities also contribute to hotter weather. Combined with heat generated by vehicle engines, it can raise temperatures by as much as 22 degrees, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. But hey, this is a column about corn sweat.)
For the next three weeks or so, corn is the sweatiest of the season. In August, soybeans take over as the top contributor to humidity.
“It is what it is,” Hunt said. As we get older—and I’m part of that crowd—it’s harder for us to fend off humidity and higher temperatures, according to those who study such things.
We have fewer active sweat glands and we just don’t sweat as much, according to a report in the academic publication, Environmental Health Perspectives. And the more humid it gets, it’s harder for sweating to cool us off.
I don’t do “steamy” very well. Give me a cold day – you can dress for that.
If you ask me (and no one really is) it’s the hot, sticky weather in summer that is driving some people to move out of Nebraska (along with living closer to family). It’s not taxes, as many politicians keep maintaining.
Anyway, humidity has gotten worse over the past 40 to 50 years, according to Hunt, in part because there’s just more corn out there.
Over the past 25 years, the amount of acres planted with corn has risen substantially, in part to produce supplies for ethanol plants. In 1990, about 74 million acres of corn were planted, a number that rose to about 95 million acres this year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
And those fields of corn are thicker than they used to be.
Back in 1996, a typical corn field in Iowa had about 23,000 plants per acre. By 2023, that number was about 31,000 plants per acre, according to a report by the University of Illinois.
My guess is those baseball playing ghosts from “Field of Dreams” would have a hard time walking through today’s fields of corn.
Thicker stands or corn means more biomass to transpire moisture, Hunt said, thus contributing to higher humidities.
Like humans, corn uses sweat to stay cool. The higher the soil moisture, the more it can sweat.
Back in the day, when I used to travel the state for the Omaha World-Herald, I’d hear people in central and western Nebraska blame center pivots for the steamier weather.
According to Hunt, that’s partly right—it will be more humid near a pivot—but there’s other contributors. Soupy winds from the Gulf Coast help push humidity higher in eastern and central Nebraska, he said.
So what can we do about it? Not much, he said, other than to be prepared and take precautions.
I’ve always thought the state motto should be “It could have been worse.” You’d pull up to a farmstead that had been flattened by a tornado, and the owner would be there shaking his head, saying that luckily, no one got hurt.
“It could have been worse,” he’d say.
I’m thinking we’ll deal with the summer soupiness the same way. It could have been worse.
