Arctic Blast: Watch People Throwing Boiling Water into Freezing Air

With temperatures across the country dropping into the single digits and even subzero figures, the frigidly cold weather resulting from an "Arctic blast" has been all anyone can talk about lately.

As a way to make the cold snap more exciting, many people have taken to the outdoors to do a little science experiment: throwing boiling water into the freezing air to see the spectacular result.

When hot water is sprayed into the air in such cold temperatures, it appears to instantly become a big white cloud.

While people may think that boiling water freezes immediately, that is not what is happening during this phenomenon, Jeff Terry, a professor of physics at the Illinois Institute of Technology, told the Los Angeles Times in 2019.

Water would have to be -42 F to immediately freeze. What is happening instead is that the hot water is quickly condensing into water droplets, essentially turning into steam. This happens at around -14 F and below and is much more possible in some of the colder U.S. states. But it is more impressive in increasingly colder weather.

Cold air has very little vapor in it, so when you throw the readily steaming boiling water into the air, the water droplets provide an even larger surface area for steam to emit from. The vapor may then precipitate by grabbing on to particles in the air and crystallizing, forming ice and snow particles that rain back to the ground.

While it's a unique and fun thing to try during a cold snap, this trick can be very dangerous. If the wind is blowing toward you, the hot water could scald you before it turns to steam, causing first- or second-degree burns for the person throwing the water as well as those standing nearby to watch.

Additionally, water landing on skin at these temperatures makes the skin a lot more prone to freezing, which could lead to frostbite, Jeff Schaider, chairman of emergency medicine at Cook County Health in Chicago, told CNN in 2019.

Several people were injured to the point of hospitalization during the 2019 winter, when temperatures in Canada dropped to as low as -28 F, with wind chills of -38 F. Arthur Sanford, a burn surgeon at Loyola University Medical Center in Chicago, told San Francisco TV station KGO that over the course of a week he had seen seven patients with blistering burns, one of whom was only 3 years old. He also saw another patient with such deep third-degree burns that she might require surgery.

Sanford said anyone with minor burns should treat them as if they were sunburns with aloe and other cooling products. Anything blistering may require more intensive medical attention, especially if the burn does not hurt, which could mean it burned through all of the skin's layers.

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