We're here now
in the weather center with meteorologist Jacob Dickey. Okay, Jacob, have you heard
of the meat sweats? Like, where you so much meat? Like when you go to those places
where they, like, chop it off onto your plate
and use the meat? No. I mean, is it similar? The corn sweats? Yes. Right. It's once you get too hot. Have you seen the corn
pop before? No. Get the popcorn in the car.
That's not just a cartoon. No it's not. I'm
just teasing it here, a turd. Can you say that on TV? I just did, I just did, did me? Yeah, yeah.
So corn sweats. Got it. A big word that it's been
humid out there, right? Totally.
My hair is not loving it. I can tell again I can't. All right, all right. Let's get to the questions
here. Yes. Question number one. It has been pretty humid
this week. You've been talking about corn
sweat on TV. Can you tell us more about how
that plays a role in things? Yeah. So first off I think
folks are like corn sweat. Is this something new? This is something that happens
all the time. It's evapotranspiration,
which is the scientific term. Basically it just means plants
release water. And that happens
all the time, happens with the corn, happens
with your trees in your yard,
the grass, all of that. But corn in particular
this time of year is really efficient at it. These are some of the dew points
for Tuesday afternoon. All those pinks in there. There's a lot of corn grown in Illinois,
and with a weather pattern that helps to hold that air
in place, you just add humidity to that and get the corn spread,
as they call it. It's just all that humidity
that is in the air. I don't think he actually see
water. You not see the corn sweating as kernels
don't pop out of there. But, certainly it is humid
when you get those dew points this time of year.
This is more what it looks like. You see a corn field. Nice. Beautiful day.
There's some corn there. But here's the secret
that's going on. All of that corn, in fact,
an acre of corn is releasing 3 to 4000
gallons of water every day. There are 12 million acres of
corn in the state of Illinois. Do some math. There
48 billion gallons of water. Up to that many billion
gallons of water a day are being released
by Illinois corn. And we're surrounded
by corn here. To give you an idea,
the Olympics are just here. That's the equivalent of 72,727
Olympic sized swimming pools of water a day
being released into the air. All of that moisture this time of year, the corn is
simply evaporating it away. And it is, perhaps, you know,
putting it into the air. It's a process. It happens. But the genetics,
the corn, plants these days
are really efficient at that. They do a lot better job
than, say, even 50 years ago when genetics
was, underrated in that corn sweat certainly is something
that, is real. But it's not this hype
this term. We just call it corn because
the corn is released in water. It sounds kind of cool. Yeah,
and we sweat it. Yeah, it's just cool.
I mean, it sounds hot. It does. I'm always shocked at
how much water our humidifier back in the office,
pulls out of the air every day. Yeah, even an even an hour.
Same thing. We're emptying
that thing a couple times a day. Okay. Next question. The forecast called for a hyper active
hurricane season, but so far, I haven't heard
of a lot of activity. How are things looking? Yeah. So we got a list of names for
you just to go through. We're only through the EA name
at this point. Ernie Esto here. And so that's the list. We've had five storms so far
which a little unusual. We thought it'd be
a little faster active here. But the one thing that's been
standing out is we got a lot of, I call it jet fuel in the ocean,
not actual jet fuel, but those waters are warm. And hurricanes love warm water. So when we finally get a pattern in the atmosphere
that is supportive of that, the thinking processes, things
will turn active pretty quickly. Here. You see, in water temperatures
in the mid upper 80s, that's warm. You go down in Miami, you go down to the Gulf Coast,
hit the beaches. It is some warm water
that is there and that's all over the area. So a lot of energy is stored
in the water. Some signs of some activity
may be picking up. Now. The National Hurricane
Center is suggesting there are low probabilities for some development
over the next seven days out in the open
waters of the Atlantic. And once you flip the switch on,
I think things will eventually start to get active. We're not even halfway through the hurricane season
yet, though. Today being late August, when you look at the numbers
here, we're up here. The uphill climb certainly is happening in the month of August,
but our busiest month, just from a climatological
standpoint, busiest month on average
is September for hurricanes. And so that is something that we will look for and see if
perhaps things pick up. I don't think
we're done by a long shot. Oh, okay. I should say
we were in Panama City with Hurricane
Debbie and Leslie. We missed it. It was beautiful every day.
So I'm still super thankful. But, we're also thankful
for hanging out with you here. Great. Are you. Are you. Even if you are a little turd
bird, you want to ask jellyfish session for next weeks? Ask your meteorologist. There is how
you can connect with him, and we'll look forward to being
with him again next week.