Instant Vapor: How Does It Work?

December 20,2012; 6:15AM,EST

It's a popular experiment in very cold places. "Winter fun in Siberia!" Dmitry Klimensky, a Russian in Siberia, declared on Twitter, with a link to a video of him throwing a boiling pot of water into the freezing air.
The video went viral, spreading across the globe.
"I'm on the top of the cover page right next to the news about a conflict between Putin and the Ukrainian president," Klimensky posted on his Facebook page. "Are there any more important things in this World than a pot of boiling water? :)"

What makes this trick work? Boiling water thrown into the air quickly freezes into tiny ice crystals. According to an article posted on University of California Riverside's physics page, hot water can freeze faster than cold water thanks to the "Mpemba effect." Author Monwhea Jeng theorized that one reason warm water freezes more quickly than cold is that the "lack of dissolved gas may change the ability of the water to conduct heat, or change the amount of heat needed to freeze a unit mass of water."

According to Facebook, it looks like Klimensky lives in Novosibirsk, Russia. Novosibirsk, a city of around a million and a half people, sits almost 1,800 miles east of Moscow. It's a cold place, with an average December high of -10.1 C (13.8 F) and low of -17.5 C (0.5 F).

A cold wave started there around Dec. 10. Since then, low temperatures in the area have been near to below 40 degrees below zero C and F on as many as seven nights. The Fahrenheit and Celsius scales cross at 40 degrees below zero.
The nearest meteorological site to Novosibirsk registered consecutive lows of -41, -38, -42 and -43 degrees F, as of Wednesday, making these nights 40 or more degrees Fahrenheit colder than usual.