heat haze

plural heat hazes · alternative rare heathaze

1. A shimmering atmospheric disturbance caused by currents of warm air between the observer and the object observed.

   Sol squinted out over the barrens to where the mountains shimmered in the heat haze.

   1990, Dan Simmons, The Fall of Hyperion, 1st edition, New York: Doubleday, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 165

   3 more examples

   Under increase of heat, it volatilizes faster, so as to become dimly visible in large mass, as a heat-haze.

   1860, John Ruskin, chapter 1, in Modern Painters […], volume V, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC, part VII (Of Cloud Beauty), § 7, page 110

   He lit his first cigarette, a Balkan and Turkish mixture made for him by Morlands of Grosvenor Street, and watched the small Waves lick the long seashore and the fishing-fleet from Dieppe string out towards the June heat-haze followed by a paper-chase of herring-gulls.

   1953, Ian Fleming, “L’Ennemi Écoute”, in Casino Royale, London: Pan Books, published 1955, page 28

   Behind them, stretching in a long line east and west, were the Roan and Book Cliffs, cut to their base by the river's gorge, and meandering away in long wavy lines distorted by heat haze and the smoke of forest fires.

   1954, Wallace Stegner, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West, Houghton Mifflin, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 75