This is the opposite, but about 10 years ago we were gathered at my dad’s house for Christmas. The TV was on and they were showing a parade in a mountain town about an hour away. Snow was falling like crazy in the background of the TV personalities but it wasn’t snowing at our location. About 8 adults all wondered if the snow was real or fake and although people were talking, eating, playing with presents, etc, we all kept bringing it up at various times over the next couple of hours. Someone would state an observation about the snow and we’d debate it for a minute then drop it.
I don’t remember what all was said so I’m making this up but it went something like this:
“I wonder if that’s fake snow?”
“I dunno, maybe it’s snowing there.”
“What’s the temperature?”
“The thermometer says 36 here but it’s probably colder in the mountains.”
“Hmm, maybe it’s snowing there.”
15 minutes later…
“The ground isn’t white, that must be fake snow”
“It’s could be melting as it hits the ground.”
15 minutes later…
“I don’t see any snow in the wide shots, it’s gotta be fake.”
“But snow is hard to see in a wide shot during the day.”
15 minutes later…
“Sometimes the snow looks big and sometimes it looks small like real snow would.”
“But you’d think that we’d see it in the wide shots when it’s big.”
“But have you noticed if they’ve done any wide shots when the snow was big?”
“Well, no.”
15 minutes later…
“There! It’s snowing in that wide shot!”
(tv announcer walks into shot)
“Oh, they’re filming the wide shot from the announcer’s booth.”
15 minutes later…
“Sometimes you see snow on the announcers shoulders and it’s gone a couple minutes later like real snow melting.”
“Doesn’t real snow melt faster than that?”
“I guess it depends on the temperature of the outer surface of the coat.”
15 minutes later…
“Look, the female’s wooly coat has snow on it. That guy’s smooth outer coat shell doesn’t. I think real snow trapped in her coat ‘hairs’ would melt slower than snow laying flat on his. His is thinner anyway so the outer surface is probably warmer from his body heat that her thick coat.”
“Or is it because fake snow slides off his smooth jacket but gets trapped in her fuzzy coat?”
15 minutes later…
“It’s really coming down. If that was fake snow, it would be piling up.”
“Maybe it’s piling up behind the booth where we can’t see.”
“But then what? There’s gotta be a lot of it, it should be spreading out to the sides where we could see it. Do they shovel it up when the camera isn’t on the announcers?”
15 minutes later…
“If it’s real, you’d think we’d have seen it in a wide shot by now or accumulating somewhere.”
“It’s been snowing hard there for like 2 hours. Would they really use like 40 tons of fake snow just to make it look like it’s snowing behind the announcers. What would be the point? And where would it all go?”
15 minutes later…
TV announcer blathering about the parade: “We have a good turnout here today as an estimated X number of people showed up. And look at that, there’s a cute baby all bundled up on this cold day…”
My brother-in-law says rather confidently “Ya know, we’ll probably never know for sure, they’re apparently not going to talk about it on TV, but I’m convinced that’s real snow. I guarantee it. We’ve been watching this forever and I’m sure of it now and I’d bet money…”
The TV announcer interrupts him: “… pretty cold but, obviously, what the people at home are seeing here behind us is, of course, fake snow.”
That certainly won’t be funny in the re-telling but we all cracked up at the time. It was such a long buildup where everyone in the room had looked at every possibility and investigated every angle and still couldn’t figure out such a mundane mystery. Then the second one of us had the guts to come to a conclusion and confidently speak up about it…