Awhile I go I was driving to work on a cold, clear morning and suddenly hit the brakes. Something wasn’t right.. there was something that didn’t look the way it should. It took me a few seconds to realize that I shouldn’t be able to see the Rocky Mountains from this part of the road. Sure, after I round the corner they are there before me, but here, I couldn’t remember seeing anything more that just the peaks barely visible above the trees. Yet there they were..

This mirage is caused by a temperature inversion of layers of air, creating an optical illusion. It was a strange sight as a drove to work and I stopped frequently to take pictures as the effect changed as I went up and down hills. Sometimes the tops of the mountains seemed normal, but there was this weird middle part that looked like it was stretched by a inept photoshop hack, other times the tops were inverted and cut off, and some times there were gaps in the mountain range where they just disappeared.