[stack]

Waves and swells can certainly block the view of of the city skyline and more often than not, do exactly that.

Depends on your viewer height, and the height of the waves. If you are looking from the same height as the tallest wave then only the height of the wave will be blocked:



If your eye is higher than the waves then you're looking over them and less than the wave height will be blocked.



Only if your eye height is lower than the wave height can the wave or swell block more than its own height.
under

(this is all assuming a flat earth of course)

According to this:

https://www.chicagotribune.com/weather/ct-wea-0817-asktom-20140817-column.html#:~:text=At%20any%20given%20wind%20speed,(2%20to%204%20feet).

Even in "favorable" weather conditions, waves on Lake Michigan can build to surprisingly great heights. Waves grow as the momentum of moving air is transferred to the water surface, and this process occurs much more effectively when air temperatures are low relative to the water temperature. At any given wind speed, cold air over warm water (the usual winter situation) builds larger waves than warm air over cold water (the summer situation). Therefore, on average, waves during the winter, typically 4 to 8 feet in height, are higher than summer waves (2 to 4 feet). The strongest winter storms can, on rare occasions, generate waves 20 to 22 feet in height on Lake Michigan.

So in winter with the 4-8ft waves then if you're standing right on the shore then it's possible that taller waves could block the view.
In a storm they definitely could. In the summer, not so much unless you're lying on your belly next to the water.

A nice demonstration of the situation for sure.

I would just add though that in the situations where the wave  height is greater than the observer height, standing at the normal water's edge would cost you your life . Cant stand in the swash zone without getting dragged out into the lake by the back-currents (damn those steongly oscillatory flows in the littoral zone!) An observer looking across the lake during storms would need to stand back, and even on the most low relief beach zones, standing back means gaining appreciable observer height as you climb up former beach ridges and semi-active dunes. This is amplified along the eastern shore of Lake Michigan which has numerous active done fields along beach zones, and high, actively eroding bluffs in many other areas.

I'd be interested to know how wave heights might cover off on these. I couldn't figure out the observer height for each of them, but I'm assuming 6' or greater. And yeah, when looking into these, there is a lot of high-ground on the Eastern side.

[Longtitube]

Stack, I would just like to point out we have gone from talking about viewing Chicago from various places around Lake Michigan to photos of Ontario on Lake Ontario viewed from various places: was that your intention? As for observer height, the photo from Grimsby Beach includes a sailboat and almost all its mast is below the horizon - that should give you an idea how high above water the camera was.

I wonder if the original question about stars will ever be answered?

[SteelyBob]

I wonder if the original question about stars will ever be answered?

I very much doubt that it will be. Tom simply referred to the EA section of the wiki, which is just hopelessly short of being a coherent theory. It doesn't explain why the stars appear to move as one body, rotating around the respective celestial poles, for example - if there was some property of light that caused it to be bent in one plane only, as EA requires, then the star 'picture' we see would distort as the rotation occurred. But it doesn't do that - the only distortion we observe is that caused by refraction, which tends to only really be noticeable very close to the horizon. Oddly, despite arguing strongly for the ability of the atmosphere to distort, Action80 is simultaneously arguing that it isn't possible for light to be refracted around a very small angle of the earth's curvature, as well as some very odd comments about shimmer that I don't think anyone has really decoded.

The other obvious problem is the southern celestial pole and its constant southerly bearing regardless of longitude - that makes no sense on the monopole FE map, and the other FE maps designed to cater for that require ridiculous twists of distance that defy even a basic understanding of geography, and indeed history.

We then got sidetracked into lakes and waves, which is where, it seems, a great deal of FE conversations end up. It's utterly mystifying - there is no photo, video or situation I've ever seen that can't be explained by RE geometry and refraction, and many 'FE proof' videos contain footage that clearly would not be possible if the earth was flat, such as any distant object with a lower portion obscured by the horizon. As AllAroundTheWrold rightly points out, unless you are right down amongst the waves, it's impossible for a wave to obscure an object that is taller than the wave itself, so entire ship's hulls, or large portions of tall buildings, for example, aren't just being obscured by waves on a flat earth - there must be something else going on, which of course is the fact that earth's surface is curved.

[stack]

Stack, I would just like to point out we have gone from talking about viewing Chicago from various places around Lake Michigan to photos of Ontario on Lake Ontario viewed from various places: was that your intention?

I was responding to "wave height" as some people claim to being the reason why the bottoms of stuff is obscured at a distance. See posts previous to mine - the discussion seemed to morph into "lights at a distance" a couple of pages ago. And whether Chicago or Toronto skylines it doesn't really matter. Just examples.

As for observer height, the photo from Grimsby Beach includes a sailboat and almost all its mast is below the horizon - that should give you an idea how high above water the camera was.

It definitely gives you an idea. But without me having a way to definitively state what the observer height is I'm loathe to speculate other than saying, "6 feet or greater". And the actual observer height doesn't really matter in the example. The visual kind of speaks for itself.

I wonder if the original question about stars will ever be answered?

Probably not.