Snow That Won’t Melt: A Quick Look at the Science

Some city leaders and people online are puzzled by videos that show snow staying solid when a flame is held near it. One video shows a man holding a lighter to a snowball, and the snow doesn’t melt or drip. Commenters say it looks like fake snow. The trick behind this effect is that real snow is mostly air—about 90 to 95 percent. When heat touches packed snow, a lot of it changes directly from solid to vapor in a process called sublimation. This means the snow can “disappear” without becoming liquid water first. The soot that appears on the surface comes from the fuel in a lighter or match, not from the snow itself. The smell people hear is the burning of that fuel, which can feel like plastic smoke when it’s not fully combusted.If you want to see this for yourself, pack a snowball tightly and hold a butane lighter on it for a few seconds. You’ll notice only a faint scorch mark and very little water dripping, even though the snowball feels solid. It’s also worth noting that making large amounts of fake snow is technically possible, but it would require enormous resources. Ski resorts use machines that spray water into cold air to create artificial snow, but covering a whole city would need billions of gallons of water and lots of energy—an impractical idea that would also be obvious because the snow wouldn’t fall from the sky. In short, real snow can resist a flame due to its high air content and sublimation. The “burning” effect is just the result of fuel combustion on a cold surface, not evidence that snow is fake.