Last week, Spaceweather.com reader Honor Wheeler strolled along a beach at Cley next the Sea in North Norfolk, UK. "I was supposed to be bird watching, but was stunned to see an amazingly clear mirage," says Wheeler. "It looked like a tidal wave and in some photos I took people located over the horizon seemed to be floating into view. It was amazing."
Atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley explains what happened: "Cley (locals say Cly, rhyming with eye) on the English Norfolk coast has a picturesque windmill and a 7 mile long, high shingle spit. The raised spit and gentle wind from the cold sea and are the keys to this complex mirage."
"On the left side of the picture there are patches of sky mixed with the distant shingle," says Cowley. "This is the familiar 'hot road' mirage. Light rays bend as they pass between layers of air cooled by the sea and heated by the sun-warmed shingle. The scene is chaotic and changing as the air layers become turbulent. That's the easy part!"
"The mirage gets more complicated because in places rays pass through at least three air layers," he says. "There is sea-cooled air under spit-warmed air beneath a higher layer of cool air. The layers tilt as air drives upwards over the spit. Light passing through this complex thicket of thermal layers produced a fearsome-looking tsunami. A similar mirage over the river Danube shows this well." www.spaceweather.com
"On the left side of the picture there are patches of sky mixed with the distant shingle," says Cowley. "This is the familiar 'hot road' mirage. Light rays bend as they pass between layers of air cooled by the sea and heated by the sun-warmed shingle. The scene is chaotic and changing as the air layers become turbulent. That's the easy part!"
"The mirage gets more complicated because in places rays pass through at least three air layers," he says. "There is sea-cooled air under spit-warmed air beneath a higher layer of cool air. The layers tilt as air drives upwards over the spit. Light passing through this complex thicket of thermal layers produced a fearsome-looking tsunami. A similar mirage over the river Danube shows this well." www.spaceweather.com
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