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Humidity and hot nights will stress crops

USDA’s meteorologist says its humidity this week, not the heatwave, that will stress crops.

“We’re not going to see much cooling at night do to extremely high dewpoint temperatures and we know from past experience this puts some tremendous stress on corn and soybeans.”    

Brad Rippey says temperatures in the nineties and above that don’t cool off at night cause the most damage.

“Growth continues during the night at the expense of yield potential in some cases.” 

Crop stress is expected across about half of the southern Corn Belt this week until cooler, drier air moves in after the weekend.