See what happens when boiling water hits ‘dangerously cold’ air along NC coast

“Extreme cold” settled over North Carolina after Saturday’s record-setting snow storm, and some National Weather Service employees figured it was a perfect chance to illustrate what happens to liquids hit single-digit temperatures.

“It’s cold outside: 8 F at the office right now, so we decided to go outside (as a meteorologist would) and do a little science experiment on the night shift!” the NWS staff in Morehead City wrote in a Feb. 1 Facebook post.

“We threw a mug of boiling water into the air.”

That’s typically a dangerous thing to do, but video of the toss shows the water “instantly converted to steam and little pellets of ice that fell back down.”

The video, filmed at 6:10 a.m., was slowed down to better show the transformation, and the streams of water almost resemble fireworks as they suddenly freeze and fall.

“Sometimes weather can be cool! (literally and figuratively),” the NWS staff wrote. “Don’t try this at home, but if you do, please don’t burn yourself.”

The video had been viewed more than 40,000 times within two hours, and racked up hundreds of reactions and comments.

Morehead City got 10 inches of snow during the snow storm, and it was followed by an Extreme Cold Warning that predicted “dangerously cold” weather with wind chills near zero.

“Frostbite and hypothermia will occur if unprotected skin is exposed to these temperatures,” the NWS warned.

Morehead City is about a 160-mile drive southeast from downtown Raleigh.