Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>]

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
> >
> > --