McDonald’s Soft Serve Ice Cream Beats iPhone In 106F Heat

As residents of Australia's Melbourne bear the brunt of extreme high temperatures, a reporter showed how a McDonald’s soft serve ice cream was suriviving. Rohan Smith, a reporter for local news.com.au, "tried filming how long it would take a McDonald’s soft serve ice cream to melt in Melbourne’s 41 celsius (106 fahrenheit) peak" Friday.

Smith said he placed the "icecream directly under the sun in an aluminium tray because I’m not about to make a mess." He then patiently waited to see the result. "I shielded my face from the sun but it was useless. My face was a sweaty mess," he wrote in his report.

"For seven minutes I waited as the resilient McDonald’s signature item stood up against the full force of the midday sun," he added. Despite extreme temperature the McDonald’s soft serve would not melt.

"It took so long to melt that my iPhone melted first," he wrote as his phone showed an alert that stated that the phone needed to be cooled down before being used.

After a five full minutes, the ice cream finally started to melt. McDonald's says it does not put any preservatives in its ice cream, which is used both in soft serves and sundaes.

According to the Bureau of Meteorology, the temperature on Friday in Melbourne was expected to get to a top of 42 C (107.6 F) but reached 41 shortly after noon. The temperature gradually exceeded its predicted top of 42 degrees, reaching 42.6 degrees (108.6F). Avalon, to the city's west, reached 45.8 degrees before cooling down to under 25 degrees (77F) in less than an hour. Five children were rescued from hot cars in parts of metropolitan Melbourne the same day.

In February 2017, a video posted on the Queensland Police Service's Facebook page showed an officer cooking an egg with a frying pan sitting on top of a vehicle parked on Big Red in Australia. During that time, the Bureau of Meteorology recorded the afternoon temperature in Birdsville to not have dipped below 41 C.