Dear Tom,
Standing on a 75-foot-high bluff just south of Saugatuck, Mich., we saw what appeared to be the Milwaukee skyline across Lake Michigan. Was it a "Fata Morgana" type of mirage?
Bonnie Wheaton
Dear Bonnie,
What you saw was a "superior mirage" sometimes called a Fata Morgana, caused by a temperature inversion with a layer of cold, dense air over the lake and warmer air above. The inversion bends the light rays from the city, creating stretched or "towering" images sometimes resembling bar codes back down towards the chilled air near the lake's surface. Fata Morgana is Italian for Morgan the fairy, a mythical character that supposedly lived in a crystal palace beneath the waves. The name came from the fairylike castle mirages that frequently appear over the Strait of Messina separating Sicily and Italy.
Standing on a 75-foot-high bluff just south of Saugatuck, Mich., we saw what appeared to be the Milwaukee skyline across Lake Michigan. Was it a "Fata Morgana" type of mirage?
Bonnie Wheaton
Dear Bonnie,
What you saw was a "superior mirage" sometimes called a Fata Morgana, caused by a temperature inversion with a layer of cold, dense air over the lake and warmer air above. The inversion bends the light rays from the city, creating stretched or "towering" images sometimes resembling bar codes back down towards the chilled air near the lake's surface. Fata Morgana is Italian for Morgan the fairy, a mythical character that supposedly lived in a crystal palace beneath the waves. The name came from the fairylike castle mirages that frequently appear over the Strait of Messina separating Sicily and Italy.
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