Your Guide to Summer’s Extreme Weather, from Corn Sweat to Flash Floods

夏日极端天气指南:从玉米汗滴到突发洪水

Science Quickly

2025-07-30

9 分钟
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单集简介 ...

The summer of 2025 has been a doozy in the U.S., with extreme weather across the country. Flash flooding caused destruction and death in Texas. Corn sweat made a heat wave in the eastern half of the U.S. worse in the Midwest. Senior editor for sustainability Andrea Thompson takes us through these extreme weather events. Recommended reading: Why Did Waters Rise So Quickly in the Texas Flash Floods? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-did-texas-flash-flood-waters-rise-so-quickly/  ‘Corn Sweat’ Is Making This Heat Wave Even Worse https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humidity-from-corn-sweat-intensifies-extreme-heat-wave-in-midwest-u-s/  E-mail us at sciencequickly@sciam.com if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with guest senior editor for sustainability Andrea Thompson. Our show is edited by Alex Sugiura with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  • For Scientific American Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Feldman.

  • With summer heat domes slamming down on parts of the US and hurricane season ramping up,

  • you've no doubt seen plenty of extreme weather stories in your feed over the last few weeks.

  • Joining me today to demystify a few of those headlines is Andrea Thompson,

  • a senior news editor for sustainability at Scientific American.

  • Thanks so much for coming on to chat with us.

  • Thanks for having me.

  • So let's go over some of the topics that people might see trending in the headlines a lot,

  • you know, during this time of year.

  • We'll start with flash flooding.

  • Could you tell us a little bit about what happened in Texas and how it was possible for these floods to becomes so dangerous so quickly.

  • Yeah, so flash flood, it's, you know,

  • sort of in the name, it happens really quickly and often takes people by surprise.

  • It happens when you have really intense rains over a fairly small area,

  • usually over a relatively short time span.

  • And that's basically what happened in Texas.

  • There's between six to 10 inches of rain in three hours, which is a lot of rain.

  • And basically the ground just.

  • can't absorb that much water that quickly, and it can be exacerbated by other aspects.

  • In cities, you have a lot of pavement, a lot of asphalt,