There have been certain people posting videos claiming to prove that the snow fallen on their lawns is actually fake. As a result, there have been even higher claims that this is a government conspiracy. Somehow, the government has figured out how to manipulate the weather, and figured out how to produce snow at such a high pace, it can be sprinkled around the south's lawns through Obama's planes. Oh, and global climate change is just a hoax. It's called sublimation, guys. SCORCHING SNOW? To clarify something, the snow doesn't scorch. That’s actually soot we see. The soot comes from incomplete combustion of the fuel (in this case, butane). Just a side experiment, try holding a butane lighter to anything for as long as the lady in the linked video above did, and look at how it ends up looking. Soot sticks to stuff, including snow. It takes 334 Joules to melt 1 gram of ice at 0°C. A butane lighter flame gives off around 900 Joules per minute. Naturally, snow is a great absorbent or insulator. Having said this, any small amount of water that’ll melt will actually be sucked up by the snow. To melt 1 gram of snow or ice you would have to hold the flame under the snowball for several minutes. Still confused? Let me put it in simpler terms. I hope we all know that snow and ice have different physical and thermal properties. How do you think the Inuit managed to build fires inside of igloos? WHY DOESN’T IT MELT? Snow is more air than water, as opposed to the composition of ice. It takes WAY more snow to fill a pot of water over a fire, than it does ice, because of the lack of tight packing of water molecules. When snow falls, it doesn’t fall in tight amounts, but rather in small, loose particles. So when it lands, it doesn’t pack tightly, but rather holds air pockets. As a result, snow is less dense than ice, and as I mentioned earlier, the little moisture that is released by the snow, is then drawn back into the snow, and therefore we see no dripping. On the other hand, ice is already as dense as it can get, so any moisture released is dripped, and so we see ice melt. I encourage you all to heat snow up in a pot, not too high in temperature, and you'll most likely see it melt. Try it, if you are so inclined--I'm not responsible for air pollution particles in the water, though! BURNING SMELL? If there was a way to include smell in YouTube videos, I would believe the claims that the burning snow releases a particular smell. I can't actually smell the snow burning, but my best educated guess here is that they are just smelling the butane. That, or maybe bits and pieces of non-water particles from air pollution. I don't know, just a guess. CONCLUSION Science was never my forte in school, but after seeing claims of a government conspiracy via fake snow, I decided to do my own research. Also, I hope we realize that melting snow with body temperature (as in actually touching it) is different than trying to burn it. I hope that some people's claims of fake snow are just a way of trolling us, and the panic risen is also just another troll. Here's how I conclude this conspiracy: science, bitches. -Dama