Cool Super-Cooled Water Video

Switching topics for a bit from the progress on my commercial: here's a cool video that someone forwarded to me: Super-Cooled Water Demonstration.

The phenomenon is this: let's say you are flying IFR, the temperature around you is below the freezing level, and you encounter visible moisture. What might happen is that the visible moisture is in the form of super-cooled water -- that is, moisture in liquid form (even though the temperature outside may be less than zero degrees C). Such moisture tends to remain in liquid state -- in fact, the more pure the water is, the more likely it is to exhibit such behavior -- unless it strikes some kind of surface that is conductive to crystallization, in which case it crystallizes (in plain language: it turns to ice). What's an example of such a surface? How about your aircraft!

This is how you may end up getting clear ice. For light aircraft, which often lack any kind of anti-icing or deicing equipment (save the Pitot Heat), this can be an extremely dangerous encounter. And unfortunately, the phenomenon shown in the video is all too common over the Cascade Mountains in the Pacific Northwest.

Well worth watching!