SNOW-ish!

One inch of snow has been promised to us but of course the kids expect the six inches we got a few years back.

So here's the stone-cold skinny on the trick we tried:

Throwing boiling water into the super-cooled atmosphere...
  The theory was and videos make it look like it will turn to snow.  Steam, yes.  Snow, no.  It was impressive though when that HUGE cloud of steam puffed out.

So we tried it with room temperature water and that didn't work either.  In high school physics, we worked out the amount of heat transfer necessary to cool boiling water and guess what?  Room temperature will get colder faster.

Flip that over and room temp water boiled faster than cold water.

Those seem obvious and since the boiling water didn't turn to snow, I didn't expect the room temp water to either, but you don't know if you don't try and it wasn't a hard experiment to set up: 1) Run the water into the saucepan. 2) Throw the water into the yard.

The disappointing part was that it didn't turn to ice either.  It hit the ground as water.

SO TODAY: continuing to use the excuse of exploring the states of matter, we are going to water the hill in the back yard and then slide down it when it freezes.  Then we are going to scrape up anything that looks like it might have snow on it and throw it at each other.  Grass ball fight because weather forecasters get away with too much.