Unusual Chemtrail Spotted in Borrowash – 01 May 2009

Planes come in all different sizes. Generally its only big jets that fly high enough and produce enough water vapour to produce a clear contrail, but smaller turbofans produce smaller, thinner contrails and the little prop-driven ones I flew never produced a contrail. You also have to bear in mind that a climbing aircraft burns tons of fuel whilst a descending one uses virtually none – aircraft actually glide in to land, and only keep their engines running in case they’re suddenly needed. So your photo looks to me like a small/medium turbofan descending through a large old contrail. As it passed through the original contrail, it has been dispersed by the aircraft’s wake vortices. I have seen an even stranger effect where the setting sun cast a shadow of a contrail on to a very thin layer of haze, producing what appeared to be a dark contrail and a light one running exactly parallel. You get some even weirder effects once you’re airborne – can’t recommend flying lessons highly enough – its as interesting for what you see and learn about weather/atmosphere as for actually flying the planes. I need to pick up a current aeronautical chart of Northern England so we can have a look at the airways around Borrowash – the big jets have to navigate by flying over ground-based radio beacons called VORs, so if you’re near one of those or under a busy airway, you will get a lot of intersecting contrails (above a VOR) or parallel contrails (along an airway). Incidentally you must have a look at Joe Viall’s website – he believed that the Lockerby bomb was triggered by the radio signal from the VOR north of Glasgow. (Vials died "suddenly" a couple of years ago and his website, with some really exceptional work is getting hacked to bits – it needs someone with your computer skills to retrieve what’s left).