S-Shaped Contrail off the Oregon Coast

Mick West

Administrator
Staff member


Taken a 2:26PM PST (22:26 UTC) yesterday, Jan 13th, from the 101 in Warrenton, OR, by Matt Crowley. Looking roughly Southwest. Here: https://www.google.com/maps/@46.161...ata=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1srg7SSnYz8sT-tZdOQXCBWA!2e0

A plausible candidate is this Gulfstream, flying a rather odd pattern, taking off from Seattle Boeing Field, flying around a bit and then returning. It's at 38,000 feet, which is quite reasonable for contrails.


While the track does not seem to have any S-shapes in it, it is very low resolution, with points about 10 miles apart, so it's plausible that this was a training flight, and the pilot did an S-turn in-between points.

While looking at this, I found another interesting flight from the same field, BOE4BA, a CL600S Challenger, flying an interesting pattern. However this seems too far North.
 

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Could it be from a military flight? I know they don't always show up on FR24

Or maybe the trail from the CL600S Challenger drifting south in the wind?
 


Taken a 2:26PM PST (22:26 UTC) yesterday, Jan 13th, from the 101 in Warrenton, OR, by Matt Crowley. Looking roughly Southwest. Here: https://www.google.com/maps/@46.161...ata=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1srg7SSnYz8sT-tZdOQXCBWA!2e0

Probably it was the same Matt Crowley who half an hour later took this picture looking South to a clear sky:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/matthetube/16280587031/

There is no StreetView for this viewpoint, but there is one nearby further down on the beach:
Screen shot 2015-01-15 at 12.59.34.png
 
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