CLEVELAND --- Scientists say it's a...

CLEVELAND --- Scientists say it's a mirage, however others swear that when the weather is right, Clevelanders can diocese across Lake Erie and disgrace Canadian trees and buildings 50 miles away.

Eyewitness accounts have drawn out been part of the city's history.

"The whole sweep of the Canadian shore stood abroad as if less than three miles away," a story in the Plain Dealer proclaimed in 1906 "The distant points across the lake stood not at home for nearly an hour and then faded away."

"I can diocese how this could be possible," said Lawrence Krauss, chairman of the physics department at Case Western store up University.

Krauss and Joe Prahl, chairman of the mechanical and aerospace engineering department at Case, said mirages can appear during an atmospheric inversion, in which a layer of cooled air blankets the lake, topped by dint of layers of increasingly warm air. When this happens, it can cause the light that filters between the walls of these layers from across the lake to bend, forming a len that can create the illusion of distant ends

HAPPENS TO SAILORS

The scientists said the air has to be extremely calm for the mirage to appear. If the wind raps it distorts or dissolves the image.

Prahl and Krauss said of the like kind a mirage is rare. moreover Tom Schmidlin, a meteorologist in the geography department at Kent State University, said it's hardly unheard-of.

"It's not terribly unusual. Sailors are always expos to this kind of thing," he said.

Prahl, who regularly sails his 30-foot sloop Seabird from Cleveland to Canada, has not at any time seen it.

'LASTED 2 OR 3 MINUTES'

however Bob Boughner, a reporter for the Chatham Daily just discovereds in Ontario, said he has seen Cleveland from across Lake Erie twice, the first time four summer ago while driving along a road near the lake. He saw it again sum of two units summers ago while driving along the same road.

All of a unlooked for there was Cleveland, just on the farther side the Canadian shore, as if it were just across a river, he said.

"I happened to turn the thoughts across the lake and, geez I couldn't believe the sight," he said. "I could papal court the cars and the stoplights. I could on a level make out the different colors of the vehicles. It lasted a worthy two or three minutes."

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

Provided from ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved