Well ya's wont have to worry about the MoonShine muckin' up your viewing!
Well maybe yes and maybe no.
Are you including any "
adult beverages" (Ol' homemade "moonshine", perhaps?) in your "toolkit" for the great "Paulding Experiment"? There's a chance that "moonshine" might "muck up yer viewin'"! (Either that, or maybe enhance it!)
Oh, and I almost forgot: Excellent find,
matti! I hadn't seen the
spooklight site before. It seems to be a fairly accurate analysis. 'Tho I must say, that is a darned stoopid choice of font color on a black background for legibility, eh?
Added 10:00AM MST (1:00PM EDT):
Speaking about the
spooklight web site, be sure to visit
Spooklights main page as well, for more excellent discussion of various visual phenomena, notably the discussion of
superior mirages, and further links as well.
Ball lightning was incidentally mentioned there as well. Now that's a phenomenon that I have personally witnessed
in my home, no less, during a thunderstorm. 'Twas a soccer ball size glowing sphere, spinning and whirling around the room, suspended at about five feet above the floor for several seconds before dissipating. I also lost a modem card and multi-function I/O board in my computer at the time due to effects of the thunderstorm. I have also observed
St. Elmo's fire in the arc of my propeller tips while flying through southern New Mexico with isolated thunderstorm cells 20 to 30 miles from the airway. I have indeed also observed
superior mirages many decades ago, in the vicinity of an inversion layer, likewise
inferior mirages, such as the "pools of water on the road" in the desert. Such inversions can develop in low areas, depressions, river valleys and the like under the right weather conditions, as the cooler air settles into the depressions with warmer air above. Could that occur in various of the river/creek valleys and depressions along the Paulding Light line of sight? It's certainly not out of the question.
See more here about
superior mirages in particular (from a link at the
Spooklights main page):
The Superior Mirage: Seeing Beyond. The Arctic Mirage mentioned there is a very tempting phenomena in the case some of the Paulding Light "sightings":
Arctic-type mirages are not confined only to regions north of 60 degrees latitude, however. Robert Greenler in his book Rainbows, Haloes and Glories reported on one interesting situation of superior mirage viewing on the night of 26 April 1977. When the residents of Grand Haven, Michigan looked westward that night across the relatively cold waters of Lake Michigan, they distinctly saw city lights and a flashing red beacon. But the nearest urban area westward from them was Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 120 km (75 miles) away, well below the geometric horizon and thus normally not visible. Their sightings were later confirmed to have been Milwaukee when a Grand Haven resident timed the blink rate of the flashing red light and linked it to the Milwaukee Harbor entrance beacon. (US Weather Service records also confirm that strong inversion conditions were indeed present that night.) The unseeable had indeed briefly become visible.
