Nature
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America is dangerously cold right now, and you should be doing everything possible to stay as warm, and, you know, alive as possible.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.But on the other hand, the polar vortex looks sniggeringly NSFW and let's face it, snow is quite fun. Case in point: People have been throwing boiling water into the polar vortex to see which will win.
Midwesterners have been venturing outside into temperatures as low as -50°F (with wind chill) in order to throw boiling water into the air and watch it freeze before it's even hit the ground.
It's pretty freaking cool to be honest.
It's possible to do this as long as the temperature is below 0.01°C (32.018°F). The water you throw needs to be boiling, as the molecules need to be more spaced out. This means that when it's thrown into the air the boiling water turns into tiny (spaced out) hot droplets.
Since very cold air can't hold as much water as warmer air, it instantly turns to condensation, which is then instantly frozen into ice crystals, making a cool frozen fog effect, Arctic climatologist for NOAA, Taneil Uttal, told National Geographic.
This is why when you shoot boiling water out of a super soaker like a slightly less puntastic Mr Freeze, it looks ridiculously awesome.
Frozen bubbles are also very cool.
So sit back, relax in the warm, and watch these awesome videos of people turning boiling water into their own little snowstorms.
Pretty cool, no? Now check out what snow actually looks like when it falls.
