VANCOUVER, WA (KATU/CNN) - A can of hairspray shattered through a windshield in Washington Tuesday.
Heat was to blame for it launching through a woman’s car.
It's a sight she never expected to see, Karmen Ayres walked to her car after work Tuesday and noticed something in her windshield.
"Saw my window and instantly thought something had fell from the sky," Ayres said. "Sure enough it was my hairspray that exploded, and it was in the back seat."
The temperature outside was around 90 degrees that day, creating the circumstances for an aerosol can to explode.
"It must have just shot through the backseat. It's a far distance to travel and with a lot of force to break through the window."
Armed with a temperature reader, Portland fire Lt. Rich Chatman said that even on a day with temperatures around 70 degrees, cars can quickly get dangerously hot.
"They say at 90 degrees the interior of a car can reach over 140 degrees in less than 30 minutes," Chatman said.
Aerosol cans, no matter what's inside - hair spray, bug spray or sun screen - cannot sustain temperatures above 120 degrees.
"When things heat up it expands so when you have those pressurized containers, it’s going to want to release," Chatman said.
That's what happened to Ayres’s hair spray earlier this week.
Chatman said that she's lucky she wasn’t in the car.
"You saw the damage it did to the window, so that could do a lot of a damage if it were to strike somebody," Chatman said.
Going forward, Ayres said she hoped this was a cautionary tale for everyone.
Most cans include a warning on the back that says something like ‘don't store in temperatures above 120 degrees.’
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