Has anyone looked up today...?

[imax2268]

This might sound stupid but I was out working in the yard this morning and I noticed somthing kind of cool...

Look at all the con-trails from planes flying today...that's some serious traveling going on today...

I just thought it's interesting...

[liberalmuse]

1. Too cloudy, here.

When I worked for a UFO hotline/research org, we'd get tons of calls about contrails. The physicist in the office said they are caused by condensation of the jet fuel in certain atmospheric conditions, or something like that. I'm no scientist, but apparently there is an explaination for them that a lot of people aren't buying.

[imax2268]

2. I just thought it looked cool...

so many people traveling today...

[Dogmudgeon]

3. You mean the Conspiracy isn't seeding the clouds with LSD?

Damn!

And all this time, I was running out into the pouring rain with my head tilted up and my mouth open, wondering why nothing was happening.

I'd been hearing so much about Acid Rain, I naturally thought ...

--bkl

[BlueCollar]

4. heat from the exhaust

causes steam in the super-cold air...

[ewagner]

5. My son will be

on a plane making one of those contrails in about three hours.....

good having him home for thanksgiving but always sad watching him board the plane again.

The contrails going into Minneapolis/St Paul are heavy today.

[trof]

6. Nope, but I looked down

and found a dime.
woohoo

[SheilaT]

7. Contrails are formed

in specific atmospheric conditions. Sometimes conditions are right, sometimes they are not. I'm in the Kansas City area, and conditions are right here, lots of contrails.

There are always a lot of airplanes flying. I'm sure I could do some kind of google search and find out how many take-offs and landings there are most days. We rarely see very many of them unless we live near the landing and take-off pattern of an airport. But I bet several hundred planes pass overhead here every day of the week.

[trof]

8. Everything you ever wanted to know about contrails

Contrails can be found over most of the planet. Now that jet plane traffic, both civilian and military, can be at anyplace over the globe at anytime, contrails are becoming more and more common. This picture was taken by the NOAA-12 satellite as it passed over portions of Europe in 1995. It is very obvious from this color enhanced satellite image that the atmosphere was very conducive to the development of contrails on this date (5 April 1995) and that these contrails were long-lived enough to accumulate with many criss-cross patterns over the same heavily travelled portion of air space.

A contrail is the condensation trail that is left behind by a passing jet plane. Contrails form when hot humid air from jet exhaust mixes with environmental air of low vapor pressure and low temperature. Vapor pressure is just a fancy term for the amount of pressure that is exerted by water vapor itself (as opposed to atmospheric, or barometric, pressure which is due to the weight of the entire atmosphere above you). The mixing occurs directly behind the plane due to the turbulence generated by the engine. If condensation (conversion from a gas to a liquid) occurs, then a contrail becomes visible. Since air temperatures at these high atmospheric levels are very cold (generally colder than -40 F), only a small amount of liquid is necessary for condensation to occur. Water is a normal byproduct of combustion in engines.
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/Flagstaff/science/contrail.htm

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

9. That heavily travel area would be Bosnia, I think

[KDLarsen]

10. Actually..

... it's Germany, with most of the contrails being in the Frankfurt/Mainz area, which is natural given the airports status as a Lufthansa Hub & most traffic going to Middle East, India and SE Asia (except Hong Kong) would pass through that area.

At the top of the picture you can see a bit of Denmark and at the bottom a bit of the alps.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

12. Yes, you are right. I was looking at it from the other way

I thought that was the Ionian at the top. Now that you mention it, yeah, duh, why would there be ice in the Med?

[BrotherBuzz]

11. Overcast here

But it's amazing this this thread didn't elicit one Chemtrail post.