Why was it so humid? Corn sweat, apparently

let's talk about corn sweat corn sweat story I saw out of the Journal Sentinel had the little Heatwave this week we had the excessive heat warnings the heat advisories all that kind of stuff in Wisconsin the Upper Midwest now obviously the intense heat largely caused by an upper Ridge over the region just asked a meteorologist weather yeah but if you've been online you may have seen this term corn swe corn popping up now the over 90 million acres of corn grown in the US each year doesn't really sweat however the crops natural evaporation process can crank up humidity levels especially in a state that grows a lot of corn hence WIS sweat Illinois Iowa Minnesota we produce the highest quantities and concentrations of corn high humidity brings higher heat indexes causing a temp when it's in the 9s to feel like it's a 100 plus like this week in Wisconsin 100 what was it 108 some places corn sweat corn sweat it's a colloquial term for evapotranspiration natural process of water evaporating from plants into the air evapo transpiration is essentially a plant's way of breathing okay during a growing season an acre of corn sweats off about 3 to 4,000 gallons of water every single day and then that goes into the atmosphere yes hence corn sweat when you're growing thousands or tens of thousands of acres of corn every year you're dealing with a lot of corn yeah I was about to say those gallons really start to add up and the more water vapor there is in the air the more humid things are going to be the hotter it's going to feel to us for for example according to a chart from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration if it feels like 91° to us when it's 90° outside relative humidity it's 40% meanwhile it feels like 113° when it's 90° outside relative humidity 80% well so what you're telling me is that the corn crop is good yeah it's corn sweat is a sign of a healthy crop it just can increase humidity levels okay all right well I say bring on the corn sweat and also Harvest your crops soon Iowa corn crops release up to 56 billion gallons of water into the atmosphere every single day that can add 5 to 10 degrees to the D point a measure of humidity okay all right and Iowa is the biggest corn producing state so then so we probably we might not be 5 to 10° but we're probably close yes yeah Iowa 2.5 billion bushels of corn produced last year holy moly Wisconsin 552.5579 [Music] from River to River it's it's all corn it's all corn and then like De Moine is somewhere in the middle of it in the corn field but Iowa and Illinois produce the more most bushels of corn wow i' never heard of corn sweat before well now I know yeah my my what did you learn today real Midwestern treat it can increase your humidity levels