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Ghost ship illusion appears on Lake Superior


UM-Bot

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Hmm, strangest looking ship I have ever seen.

Edited by UM-Bot
Removed inflammatory remark - keep the comments constructive please.
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My initial thoughts were I thought it looked more like a tower or something like that- sometimes buildings are "enhanced" by the weather conditions over the great lakes. They can take on a haze or shimmer, like a desert mirage. And it distorts the true shape of the building. I guess it could be a tall ship too, but I doubt it. It could also be plumes- like from industry or burning, or even a cloud mass- sometimes those look really weird over the water too.

And then I read the article after- I like to see what I can see without spoilers first :) And darn it if the article didn't mention that it might be a lighthouse, and that there was a rare weather mirage out that way too.

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I've watched a few episodes of a show on the Weather Channel (can't recall the title at the moment) where they discuss all manner of weather phenomena. One similar to this has been discussed where ships closer in appeared to be floating over the water. Or looked bigger than they actually were. So this could be something shorter in reality, but the distance and the atmosphere make it appear much taller than it is.

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I believe its a magnified optical illusion of the Granite Island Lighthouse. If you take the image of the lighthouse (and nearby metal structure) and stretch it vertically, a bit like how mirrors stretch bodies at carnival sideshows, you can see that it is a stretched distortion of it. I would imagine that it is the same sort of illusion that makes oil tankers float in the sky.

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It's a ship from the Fae Court of Winter.  No doubt it has something to do with a case that Harry Dresden is working.

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Something like what happened in the movie The Mist may be happening. Like the cloud city seen in Japan.

Edited by Ghost Ship
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This happens every day that humidity is high at water level on the Great Lakes. I've seen this more times than I can count. Normal sighting distance for a Laker (commercial ship on the Great Lakes) is about 15-miles, but when humidity is high and lighting is right, you can see Lakers that are well over the horizon - up to about 25 miles away. For large buildings like evaporation/cooling towers at nuke plants or sky-scrapers, it is even farther. I've seen the skyline of Cleveland from Pelee Point in Canada... some 50 miles away.

On the Great Lakes, this affect is called,

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Fata Morgana.

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On 10/12/2016 at 8:13 AM, herbygant said:

Cloud.

No

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Can't be bothered, but if we had the exact location from which the image was taken and it was possible to work out a rough azimuth from the imagery, we could verify what the camera was pointing at.  These mirages generally go straight up/down...

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  • 2 weeks later...
4 hours ago, getreal1951 said:

kinda looks like twin towers coming down.

What?

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I can see how it could be thought of as a sail, although it rather looks like that hotel in, is it Dubai? Somewhere round there anyway. 

 

This one:  Image result for hotel in dubai

 

Anyway, it's probably a mirage, these things usually are, I find.

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On 10/15/2016 at 7:32 PM, ChrLzs said:

Can't be bothered, but if we had the exact location from which the image was taken and it was possible to work out a rough azimuth from the imagery, we could verify what the camera was pointing at.  These mirages generally go straight up/down...

Can't be bothered either. But I will say that where I live we have the channel islands. And, interestingly, under some interesting atmospheric conditions one of the islands we can see it from the beach. Really odd.

Cheers,
Badeskov 

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  • 4 years later...

Based on my experience, it's the silhouette of the stern of the longest freighter on the Great Lakes, the "Paul R. Tregurtha",  passing by what I think is the Stannard Rock Lighthouse, heading down the charted "shipping lanes"(beyond that lighthouse(as shown on NOAA Chart #14961))toward the Whitefish Point Lighthouse and the Soo Locks.

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8 minutes ago, jk516 said:

Based on my experience, it's the silhouette of the stern of the longest freighter on the Great Lakes, the "Paul R. Tregurtha",  passing by what I think is the Stannard Rock Lighthouse, heading down the charted "shipping lanes"(beyond that lighthouse(as shown on NOAA Chart #14961))toward the Whitefish Point Lighthouse and the Soo Locks.

Wow, that's precise. Thanks for the info. 

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Just saw a show where this very picture was 100% proven to be an island out in the lake with buildings on it. Normally it can't be seen from shore but weather conditions that day created the mirage effect and "raised" it up to viewing height. 

 

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  • 2 months later...
 

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