By Vaughn Hulcy , Taven Duffey, Elijah Munoz

A recent investigation has discovered the source of the intense snow that has covered much of the United States in snow and canceled school from Feb, 24 to March 3. The events that caused the snow storm began in Bear River High School’s chemistry lab.

On the afternoon of Feb. 23, Mrs. Weir had just finished her last chemistry class of the day. As the students packed their backpacks and bolted out of the classroom in a rush to get home, Weir sat back in her chair, thinking. During class, a student (who has requested to remain anonymous) had asked her about supercooling substances, where it is possible to lower a liquid below its freezing point without the liquid becoming solid.

She thought about how exactly to show to the student how it worked.

As she graded the work the students had submitted, she suddenly got a brilliant idea: she decided that the best way to show the student how supercooling worked was to set up a lab for the class.

Weir then proceeded to stop grading the assignments and went into the chemistry lab. She wanted to make sure that the lab idea would work and be safe for the students, and the best way to do that was to do the experiments herself. After about half an hour Mrs. Weir had done it. She had managed to supercool a substance without it freezing.

Weir exclaimed, “I was mixing different chemicals to provide the endothermic conditions required to supercool my water sample.”

The substance, which has not yet been identified by investigators, was kept at these temperatures in a glass cylinder inside the lab. After proving to herself that it could be done, Weir then proceeded to write up the lab assignment for her class in her office.

“I was pleased with the results and was attempting to transfer a seed crystal to nucleate the crystallization process and confirm my results when something went terribly wrong,” Weir said.

What happened next is unknown.

Even Weir didn’t know, stating, “We will never know exactly what happened because I mentally blacked out and I can’t remember much of the details. I only have the photo from the video camera in my classroom to go by.”

Perhaps the substance that was supercooled was more unstable than expected, maybe a student entered the lab and accidentally knocked the cylinder over, but what is known is that the glass canister was somehow compromised, resulting in the substance it contained immediately heating up and turning into a gas.

This gas then floated up into the atmosphere and caused a dramatic change in the weather. Track and field students on the field at the time noted that there was light snowfall that day after school but had no idea what had caused it.

That night, the small snowstorm increased dramatically in size and intensity, spreading across the United States and causing heavy snowfall. This caused a huge amount of school closures, including more than a week of no school at Bear River. Students nearby were observed shouting for joy and enjoying their days off.