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  • From: "Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>
  • To: "JP vd Giessen (FOL)" <janpieter AT giessen.fol.nl>, <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Genesis 2:6
  • Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2005 20:45:02 +0300

What I was able to find out: dew level in the Negev is 0.1mm daily in late summer (west wind season, wind coming from the sea). Extrapolated, that comes to 3.5cm/year. Since we extrapolated the peak dew, actually it is much less.
Now, even inland Sahara receives 1.5cm/year of rain, and is notoriously out of shrubs. Very arid deserts, where to all purposes no plants exist, receive 5cm/year.
Overall, dew possibly sustain plants for short periods, but plants do not grow on dew.

Vadim Cherny



See the following references about dew in Israel:
* Linacre, E.T. 1992. Climate Data and Resources. (Routledge, London) 366pp.
* Zangvill, A. 1996. Six years of dew observations in the Negev Desert, Israel. J. Arid Environments, 32, 361-71.
* Jacobs, A.F.G., B.G. Heusinkveld and S. Berkowicz 1998. Dewdeposition and early morning evaporation in a desert environment. 23rdConf. on Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, Albuquerque, New Mexico(Amer. Meteor. Soc.), preprints, 349-52.

Further:
Expirements in my garden (in Barneveld a dry place in the Netherlands)gave this summer very interesting results: 1liter/m2 every morning,enough for the growing of some plants like Eupatorium purpurea (1.5 m high).And this was no rain! In the period I made my experiments the daytemperature was about 27 Celsius and night temperature 18 Celsius.
I used 3 boxes, 2 boxes with the Eupatorium purpurea (about 30 centimeters deep) and between these 2 boxes an empty box for the measurements. Most of the dew was fallen from the Eupatorium purpurea in this box, a smaller box with no plants/trees in the neighbourhood gave about 0.15 deciliter/m2

Jan Pieter van de Giessen

On Mon, 03 Oct 2005 09:35:15 -0500, Karl Randolph wrote
This past weekend I was reminded of this verse as my
shoes squished in the mud. I live in a place where it
seldom rains from March through October, often the rains
start in December. But we often have heavy dew, even fog
in this area. Friday night and Saturday we had fog, which
condensed on tree leaves and on grasses and dripped to
the ground. The trail was actually mud under the trees.
The soil was damp in the grassy areas. Sunday morning
we a heavy dew. Though not as wet as on Saturday, it
certainly was not dry. No, we did not have an unusual
rainfall. Traditional plants, even forests, thrive in these
conditions. Grasses (and grains) usually put out their
seeds shortly after the last rains, before the dryness of
the summer.

Local dryland farmers from before this place became
urbanized, historically recognized that a few nights of
heavy dew equalled a day of drizzle.

As for the conditions in Eden, it is very doubtful that it
was in a desert.

Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>

> Haggai says, basically, "The drought is such that there is even no > dew."
> Nothing implies that dew (tal, no 'ed) suffices to water the plants.
>
> Vadim Cherny

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