Chicago-area residents amused themselves in the midst of near-record-cold on Wednesday by taking boiling water outside, throwing it into the air, watching it freeze before it hit the ground, then sharing the video on social media.

Temperatures were so cold on Wednesday morning that Chicago residents observed steam rising from Lake Michigan — since the air was so much colder than the water — forming clouds of steam along the lakefront.

40-foot wall of ice steam on Lake Michigan today outside my window. Chicago is on lockdown today — ain’t nobody going anywhere! #Chiberia #CabinFever pic.twitter.com/qIfcX7SZbm — Susana leyva (@SusanaLeyva) January 30, 2019

Local ABC News affiliate WLS-7 reported: “Temperatures Wednesday night into Thursday could challenge the record low temperature for Chicago of -27 degrees. The high temperature for Wednesday was -10, which was near the record of -11.”

The wind chill was reported to be -49º F at O’Hare International Airport on Wednesday morning — roughly 100 degrees colder than the effective temperature in San Francisco, California, which was in the low 50s.

Temperatures were similarly low across the upper Midwest, and are expected to warm again, relatively speaking, by the weekend, when Chicago will heat up past the freezing mark.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.