Why do mirages look like water

Mirages can be spotted anywhere where the ground can absorb a lot of heat. The most spectacular mirages occur in wide expanses of flat land as too many hills, dips or bumps will prevent the refracted light from reaching your eyes.

Take a look at this video for more in depth information on the Science of Mirages and to see a mirage called a Fata Morgana where a city in China experienced seeing a floating city!

Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. How do mirages form? Where can you spot a mirage? Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. In this picture it looks as though these mountains are reflected in a lake. There might not even be mountains there at all.

Mirages are most common in deserts. They happen when light passes through two layers of air with different temperatures. The desert sun heats the sand, which in turn heats the air just above it. The hot air bends light rays and reflects the sky. As light from the sky travels downward toward the hot road, it moves through these increasingly warm and less dense layers of air, changing speed and refracting as it moves through each one.

It winds up taking a sort of u-shaped path down toward the road, then parallel to it and finally back up into the sky—where it may meet the eye of someone standing up the road. They trace it back along a straight line and interpret that point as its origin and the location of the object.

What you see, then, is a little bit of sky that appears to be sitting on the ground—an inferior mirage where the mirage is under the real object. Turbulence of the air also distorts the mirage, strengthening the effect. BY Matt Soniak. Big Questions roads science water weather. Subscribe to our Newsletter!