But, won’t it turn into ceramic or something, there? Would I be guaranteed of avoiding such a transition before, uh, a full exit was acheived? :eek:
Well, on Mythbusters, they proved that even in extreme cold conditions urine won’t freeze before it hits the ground, so I doubt that steamer coming out your backside would be any different.
No, as the former is traditionally used by people who are sick of living in London…
I can report that my fire company was dispatched one winter day when a motorist passed a farm and thought he saw smoke. The “smoke” was a steaming pile of horse apples. In the fire service, that would qualify as a “shit call”. 
The tough part was not laughing on the radio when returning the assignment.
I went to an agricultural boarding school. The school owned a herd of dairy cattle, and once a term students had to do dairy duty, which involved getting up before dawn to help milk the cows (not by hand!) and to shovel up their crap.
While they were waiting to be put through the milking process, plenty of the cattle laid big turds on the concrete waiting area. If it was cold, those big cowpats steamed like they were on fire, and the whole area got misty with turd-fog.
The proper term is “poo gas.” Because it sounds funnier. Unless you’re in Scotland, in which case the term is “crud vapors.”
Do you smell that too?
Haven’t you seen photos of steaming rivers in winter? Even cold river water will “steam” if the air is even colder. Well, much colder.
Well, to add to this fascinating scientific thread, I can well vouchsafe for this. When I was mushing a dogteam north of Fairbanks, back in 1946-7, there was no doubt about steam rising.
When the temperatures were down in the minus 60s, one learned how to deficate very, very quickly. What’s more, exposing bare skin while dropping the old pants was hazardous. The Eskimo solved this by slathering bear grease all over their lower area, which by spring began to get rather ripe. We preferred to use Vaseline.
These are the things you don’t learn about in movies and books on life in the Arctic, alas. The stories I could tell…