Aero-optical phenomena associated with beam propagation through variable-index-of-refraction fields generated by turbulent shear-layers and jets will be discussed. Measurements of wavefront-phase behavior, as a two-dimensional (sheet) optical beam emerges from the turbulent region in these free-shear flows were undertaken that exploit simultaneous imaging of the optical-beam distortion and the turbulent-flow index-of-refraction field, Fourier-filtering, and other techniques. Spatial-wavefront-phase spectra, from both shear layers and jets, are found to exhibit non-Kolmogorov behavior. A simple level-set representation of the index-of-refraction field in high Reynolds number shear layers is found to be quite successful in representing the resulting wavefront-phase behavior.