Canadian skyline appears scrambled due to spooky mirage

PORT ANGELES, Wash. -- You OK up determination successful Canada?

A hot, summer time successful the Pacific Northwest led to immoderate antithetic sights on the shores of Canada's Vancouver Island Tuesday, with distant skylines and shorelines appearing warped arsenic if determination was a glitch successful the Matrix.

In this case, it was a mirage -- specifically, a "Fata Morgana."

Fata Morgana mirage successful Victoria, B.C. connected Aug. 26, 2025.

(Karen Sistek / FOX Weather)

The videos and photos supra were taken from crossed the Strait of Juan de Fuca successful Port Angeles, Washington looking retired toward Victoria, B.C.

FATA MORGANA: A WEIRD MIRAGE THAT MAKES DISTANT OBJECTS APPEAR WARPED

The unusual sights travel from the acold 53-degree waters of the Strait, interacting with the unusually blistery upwind gripping the Pacific Northwest this week.

The aerial adjacent the aboveground is cooled by water, past becomes trapped beneath a furniture of importantly warmer aerial aloft of lighter density, known arsenic a somesthesia inversion. 

"So connected a blistery summertime time adjacent to the acold waters, you get a shallow furniture of aerial adjacent the h2o that is made overmuch colder than the aerial supra it, and thus, making it denser," said Michael Kavulich with the National Center for Atmospheric Research. 

This causes airy rays from distant objects to refract, oregon bend, downward toward an perceiver lasting connected the ground.

"As airy moves from a portion of little dense substance to much dense substance, nary substance what the substance, it volition crook distant from a consecutive enactment path!" Kavulich said. "If you person a furniture of importantly denser aerial adjacent the surface, airy volition thin to crook downwards, meaning you spot things arsenic ‘higher up’ than they are successful reality."

This tricks our brains into seeing the objects arsenic if their refracted airy traveled successful a consecutive enactment alternatively than bending arsenic it passed done the layers of varying somesthesia wrong the inversion.

Distant landmarks oregon shorelines volition look warped oregon stretched, making them look some taller and person than they really are due to the fact that the perceiver is typically viewing respective specified mirages stacked connected apical of each other.