http://mysteriousuniverse.org
Before you start screaming “Fata Morgana!” and have your neighbors wondering if you’re in some strange cult (again!), most experts agree with you that the latest eerie and misty floating city to appear above a grounded one in China is one of those rare and unusual superior mirages. The real mystery that has them baffled is why they’re occurring with such frequency, not just in China but around the world.
On June 6th, residents of Wuzhong City in north central China walked outside after a severe storm that dumped hail and four inches of rain on them to see not a rainbow (although conditions were right for that kind of formerly mystical and misunderstood phenomenon too) but a shadowy image of a city appearing to float high above their own skyline. As with many of these appearances, the floating city doesn’t seem to match the city it’s hovering over … hence the meteorologically uninformed may assume it’s a ghost city, a portal to a parallel universe or some government experiment. Those in the know know it’s the result of warm air sitting on top of cooler air (from the storm or a cold ground surface) causing light to be refracted in a way that tricks the mind into picturing objects (cities, boats, mountains) where it thinks they should be, not where they actually are.
