I live on the outskirts of town in Central Indiana, out here surrounded by tall corn on every side this time of year. Happy in the Heartland, but miserable, muggy and sweaty, I just read this:

Stop blaming the natural deodorant: You’re sweating because the corn is sweating. For anyone commuting in the Midwest, this week’s heat wave felt even hotter thanks to evapotranspiration, or “corn sweat.” And it will likely only get worse with climate change.

Evapo-what now? To beat the heat, corn and other crops that blanket the Midwest (like soybeans) pull a bunch of moisture from the soil and then ditch whatever they don’t need as vapor into the air. All plants do evapotranspiration, but when there’s so much of the same plant in an area getting hit with extreme heat, the vapor can supercharge humidity:

  • An acre of corn expels up to 4,000 gallons of water each day, according to the US Geological Survey.
  • Iowa, the top corn-producing state in the US, planted roughly 13.1 million acres of the crop this year, according to USDA data. Not to mention the state is sandwiched between Illinois and Nebraska, number 2 and 3 on that list and Indiana is just to the east of all that corn sweat!

It’s not the kernel’s fault. The combination of extreme heat caused by climate change and the growing demand for corn is to blame for making summers stickier.

Just goes to show, it’s always something…