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

[velabella]

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!

 

[Mick West]

Do you happen to know the flight number?

Looks much more like "steam" (condensed water vapor) than smoke. Possibly some kind of large works.

 

[velabella]

Do you happen to know the flight number?

American Airlines 3600
Departed XNA at 7:35, dec 1, 2013

Now that I think about it this plume would probably not show up on a satellite, or would be very tiny...

 

[Mick West]

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/AAL3600/history/20131201/1335Z/KXNA/KORD

Google Earth track attached.

 

[Mick West]

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.

 

[Mick West]

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.

 

[velabella]

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!