Every summer, just as the Midwest becomes a sticky cauldron of heat, corn fields across Iowa and Illinois make things worse by unleashing a deluge of invisible moisture into the air. This phenomenon is affectionately, a bit misleadingly, and definitely disconcertingly dubbed “corn sweat.”

If you’re picturing ears of corn covered in perspiration while wearing sweat bands and gym shorts, you are extremely far off from what corn sweat actually is. To be fair to you, the name does not do a great job of describing the phenomenon.

The scientific name for this sticky mess is “evapotranspiration,” and it happens when plants like corn and soybeans release water vapor through their leaves. When you’re growing millions of acres of corn, that’s a lot of vapor. In Iowa alone, those corn stalks can pu

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