Giant plume seen from plane. [Cooling Tower Condensation Cloud]

velabella

New Member
On my flight from Fayetteville, Arkansas to Chicago I looked out the window and saw this enormous plume! It was fantastic. This was on December 1st, about 2 hours into the flight (I think). Curious about what it could have been, I looked up online and came across dutch's video. Can't say the whole controlled burn seems right





, and after seeing this out of the airplane window, well - those plumes in his video do look tall and narrow just like this one!
 

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Do you happen to know the flight number?

Looks much more like "steam" (condensed water vapor) than smoke. Possibly some kind of large works.
 
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you say two hours into the flight, but it's only a 1 hr 23 min flight? Dept 7:40 AM, arrive 9:03 AM

Your first photo is timestamped 8:06 AM. 26 min into the flight. Maybe a lot longer after you boarded the plane though.
 
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8:06 (9:06 adjusted for DST) puts you here:





Which puts your plume at the point indicated, which is: 38.761510° -91.785122°


A cooling tower!!

It's the Callaway Nuclear Generating Station. That's just condensation from the cooling tower. It's humid (you can see fog on the ground), so the plume is persistent.


 
Wow! Nice job! That's definitely it. I really thought that if there was any structure down there I would have seen some semblance of it. I fell asleep on the flight before seeing this so I was disoriented with time. Thanks For your great investigation!
 
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