Weird Weather

Another remarkable example of a weird mirage appeared over Edinburgh in 1986, when two eyewitnesses saw what looked like a cigar-shaped UFO flying close by. The only known aircraft at the time was a Boeing 757 landing at nearby Edinburgh's Logan Airport - the 'alien craft' was probably an upside down mirage of the aircraft alongside the normal image, creating the appearance of a flying cylinder.

Weird Colours in the Sky

"Once in a blue moon" goes the saying, and it's a rare thing indeed, but the moon really can change blue. It happened in 1950, when a massive forest fire raging in Alberta, Canada, poured gigantic clouds of fine, sooty droplets that weeks later reached Europe, 4 miles high in the sky. These droplets were just the right size to scatter moonlight and make the moon appear blue. Probably the most fantastic coloured moons - and suns - were seen all over the world following the eruption of Krakatau in 1883. Tremendous quantities of extremely fine volcanic dust were shot up into the upper atmosphere and stayed afloat for years, creating stupendous sunrises and sunsets as the dust scattered red light strongly when the sun was low in the sky. The dust from Krakatoa also created beautiful rings of blue, brown and white around the sun and moon. This stunning phenomenon might explain a later sighting in 1917, when three children claimed they saw the Virgin Mary in the sky near the village of Fatima in Portugal. Their vision eventually attracted 100,000 pilgrims who watched in amazement as veils of silver, blue and yellow played in ethereal dances over the sun. But it was probably caused by a volcanic eruption in Costa Rica in Central America.

Whirlwinds and Vortices

The Loch Ness Monster and his other cousins dotted around deep lakes all over the world might be explained by an interesting sort of weather. They could be all mistaken for water devils - small whirlwinds forming over warm waters. They spin up a funnel of water which darts around and looks just like the neck and a head of a dinosaur, often pausing 'for breath', and sometimes hissing and bubbling like a frantic animal. No wonder eyewitnesses have been often been scared witless as they've faced one of these 'beasts' of the water.