Setting up well in front of a lightning-started grass fire, and aware of the ambient winds, I knew I had a few minutes before it grew too close. This allowed time to whip out a zoom camera and shoot some close-up views of the growing inferno, its smoke and the superheated air immediately adjacent. Roiling along with temperatures of several hundred to over a thousand degrees, the superheated air was far less dense than the ambient air between me and the fire, or behind it. The density differences cause light to bend fluidly, warping the view through the hottest air, in a far more fast-changing but physically similar way as a solar-heated surface on a calm, cool day can cause mirages.
2 N Aroya CO (8 Jun 24) Looking E
38.8892, -103.1268