Crockerland
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Three years before he became the first man to stand at the North Pole, Admiral Robert Peary discovered a new range of Arctic mountains or so he thought. Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton and this is The Weather Notebook.
In 1906, Peary was astounded to spy a previously undiscovered mountain chain northwest of Cape Colgate, in Canada's Northwest Territories. Peary named the place 'Crocker Land' for one of his expedition's supporters, and in 1913, the American Museum of Natural History put up $6,000 to fund an expedition to explore Crocker Land.
The Eskimos in the area, however, knew that what the explorers were really seeing was something that they called a "poo-jok," a misty mirage common in cold polar regions. Now, many people consider mirages a desert phenomenon, but mirages can occur whenever you get a narrow band of relatively warm air right next to a narrow band of relatively cool air just above the earth or sea. The boundary between the warm and cold air can actually bend light as it passes through, or even reflect images from farther away. And this light refraction can cause apparitions such as desert oases, puddles on hot pavement, or even mountain ranges.
So, with the $6,000 in funding, Admiral Peary went back to the Arctic to explore Crocker Land -- which, as we all know, was a mirage. But difficulties getting back out from where Crocker Land was supposed to be caused the expedition to linger for a long five years. In the end, it cost the Museum a total of $100,000 only to find a land that didn't exist.
The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mount Washington Observatory, at mountwashington.org. Our show is underwritten by Subaru, with major support provided by the National Science Foundation.
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