A very convincing optical illusion gave a local photographer quite the scare when she thought a giant iceberg was floating down the Salish Sea. (submitted photo/Simone Engels)

By Alex Rawnsley

floating iceberg

‘It was so convincing, so real:’ floating Salish Sea ‘iceberg’ stumps Nanoose photographer

Jan 12, 2022 | 5:20 AM

NANAIMO — Simone Engels was left in disbelief while taking pictures of a recent evening sunset.

She was at a beach in Moorecroft Regional Park in Nanoose Bay on Sunday, Jan. 9, taking snapshots of the changing sky and a distant Mt. Baker when an unusual object seemingly floating in the water caught her attention.

“When I looked through the camera, I couldn’t believe my eyes because what I was looking at was an iceberg,” Engels told NanaimoNewsNOW. “I looked again then put my camera down…then I looked through it again and thought this was really strange.”

An unusually sharp image of a white mass sat on the water line in the distance but with no-one else around to confirm what she saw, she decided to snap some photos to post online.

Engels said it was a very crisp image of what looked like an iceberg, not typical of an ordinary mirage which would otherwise have been distorted or blurry.

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“It was so convincing, so real. If you look at the image where I zoomed in, to me it doesn’t look like an image that was fuzzy on the edges, it looked like a real iceberg and it had me completely stumped.”

While photographing the evening sunset on Sunday, Jan. 9, Simone Engels captured what she thought was an iceberg, but instead a unique projection. (submitted photo/Simone Engels)

Common sense though was pushing her towards a more logical conclusion, with several commenters to her post on a community social media group suggesting it was almost certainly an illusion.

What Engels saw, was in fact the distorted and stretched peaks of Mt. Cheam near Chilliwack, around 180 kilometres away.

Light from the sun reflected off the snow-covered surface of the mountain and was then bent back down by air temperature changes and atmospheric conditions, causing a projection on the water visible at the right angle for Engels.

The phenomenon is called a “superior mirage” and can occur when a hotter air mass comes over the top of a colder one and creates an atmospheric inversion.

Colin Goldblatt, an earth and sciences professor at the University of Victoria, said changes in the atmospheric temperatures force light to bend and visually transport objects.

“Rays of light get bent downwards so as the observer, we think they’re higher than they actually are. It can also help us to see things that are maybe further away or maybe would have been across the horizon if there hadn’t been a mirage.”

A few days of clear, dry weather in early January helped purge the atmosphere of a lot of pollution and other contaminants, making way for light to travel, bend and create a projection.

“When we’ve got little particles in the atmosphere…that helps scatter away light and make things in the distance appear less clear than they otherwise would be,” Goldblatt said. “This air was very dry, very clear because there wasn’t any water for the particles to absorb.”

Under perfect conditions, with dry air and no pollution, Goldblatt said we’d be able to see objects up to 500 kilometres away.

Different atmospheric refractions are a relatively regular occurrence. Some are as common as the appearance of water on a stretch of highway during a hot, dry summer day.

Armel Castellan, a meteorologist with Environment Canada, said we see them on an almost daily basis, cloud cover permitting.

“When you’re looking through different densities of atmosphere, you can change where an object might be looking. That’s also true for the sun or moon, it can actually be below the horizon but as a result of the atmospheric refraction it’s actually visible to you for those extra seconds and minutes.”

Similar illusions, including fata morgana which involves the apparent layering of an object, have been reported by sailors for centuries and are believed responsible for old legends like ghost ships or floating cities.

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alex@nanaimonewsnow.com

On Twitter: @alexrawnsley