Curious water phenomenom I can't explain.

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Not to derail, but I remember a similar phenomenon.

It has to do with water being "boiling" temperature, but no agitation. If you do something to disturb the water, the water will practically explode because whatever the phenomena is, it was impeding the normal boiling process and now it's all being released at one time.

I don't recall what it's called or how likely it is to encounter it.

I've also put a lot of thought into this. First of all one must remember that all of the water that has reached the BP will "want" to change phase so that molecules at the bottom, middle and top will be in the process of phase change to gas therefor the bubbles are created throughout the sample. Water has surface tension due to the hydrogen bonds being stressed. I wish I could draw a picture to illustrate this. The molecular bond of the water molecules in the center are surrounded by other molecules in a shape that lessens the stress and balances the bonding forces, on the other hand the surface molecules lack bonds on a side (the top side) and are alined differently (like the difference of placing 4 blocks in a diamond shape with just the corners touching and lining all 4 blocks up in a straight line with entire sides touching) and therefor there bonding energy is distributed differently. This is why the top of the water bubbles so vigorously. In all actuality the gas is coming from all points of the sample. Others have gone over the effect of removing the source of energy and the cause and effect of that and elevation, atmospheric pressure, exc. so I won't go into all of that.

Foam is most likely due to impurities in the water or that were left on the pot. Take for example what happens when you boil pasta, foam (there may be pasta residue on your pot) When you add oil the foam is less likely to occur due to the hydrophobic nature of the lipid tails that most likely surround the impurity, if the impurity is more attracted to the oil then the water, and do not allow the impurity to be deposited on the surface of the water where it does not vaporize but instead becomes agitated causing foam. Try adding some oil to your water, if it no longer foams then it was an impurity either in the water or on the pot. Other wise I don't know what else could cause foam, H2O alone should not foam. But I wonder what would happen at much greater pressures or much less pressure perhaps there is a circumstance that would cause water to foam, something to think on.

As far as the water exploding this must be like or similar to a saturation affect. Like how you can super saturate a solution by mixing it at high temp. and such and then cooling it quickly. Maybe a substance can be super saturated with energy? This seems like the most logical explanation. then the simple act of touch is enough to ignite the phase shift. It would have to be a very quick addition of energy so quick that the phase shift does not have a chance to happen normally like in a microwave. I have heard of the phenomenon but I also forget what it was called and I have never heard of a satisfactory explanation of the reason for the effect except my own logical conclusions.