Why rain turns to steam

Question

When the road or pavement is wet and the sun comes out you can see steam rising sometimes - yet if u touch the pavement/road it is cold to touch. Why does the water steam when it is cold to touch ?

Answer 1

What you are seeing is water vapor.  It is visible because at the point where the sun's heat radiates back from the road the air has reached its "Dew Point".  Dew Point is term referring to the temperature a volume of air must be lowered to, to make the moisture in it visible.  In this case, the sun is evaporating moisture from the road into the air just above it. This raises the amount of moisture in the air making it more humid.  The more humid the air the higher the Dew Point temperature is.  

Once you comprehend the Dew Point it explains why you ever see moisture suspended in air.  It is the reason you can see your breath on a cold day, why vapor emits from ice cubes in the back yard in the Summer, why there are clouds, why there is fog and of course, where the moisture on the grass in the morning came from.

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Answer 2

Basically because the energy from the sun is not making it through to the lower layers of water and is only boiling the surface molecules off.

You have to understand that given a large volume of molecules, the temperature measured is an "average" - some of them can be at a much higher (and equally much lower) temperature than the average.

The water is, on average, cold - but the surface is directly absorbing most of the energy and so it boils off before conducting much heat down into the lower layers.

Answer 3

it evaporates

Answer 4

It is NOT steam. It's water vapor. Steam is invisible.