Sinusoidal Thin Contrails Explained [Meandering Solitary Hybrid Contrails; the 'Rook' Instability]
- Thread starter Trailspotter
- Start date
Trailspotter
Senior Member.
Did Kevin Palmer replied to your request? The time and exact place of photo will aid the flight identification.
No reply yet.
Trailspotter
Senior Member.
Incidentally, I saw a solitary thin trail yesterday. Not as spectacular as above, more like the one in my post #34 in the previous page. It evolved only a little wave and dissipated in about five minutes after its formation by shrinking from the ends. The Emirates A380, flight UAE17, was descending to Manchester and passed about 14 miles southwest of my location:
It stopped producing contrail below 30,000 ft or less, but before that it left a typical two-strand hybrid contrail, with one strand dissipating faster than the other:
In five or so minutes, when another flight, AF1486, approached the same patch of the sky, the remnants of the survived strand looked a bit wavy, but did not last much longer:
It stopped producing contrail below 30,000 ft or less, but before that it left a typical two-strand hybrid contrail, with one strand dissipating faster than the other:
In five or so minutes, when another flight, AF1486, approached the same patch of the sky, the remnants of the survived strand looked a bit wavy, but did not last much longer:
Last edited:
He sent me this, I'll ask for the location
Date Time Digitized: Nov 24, 2016, 12:50:59 PM
Response:
https://www.flightradar24.com/2016-11-24/18:45/12x/NCR584/bb5601b
18:50 UTC, gives a likely candidate National 8584External Quote:
https://www.flightradar24.com/2016-11-24/18:45/12x/NCR584/bb5601b
Trailspotter
Senior Member.
Trailspotter
Senior Member.
A new sighting of solitary thin trail in Dublin, Ireland on November 30, 2016 at 14:08 UTC.
A380 Contrail by Ken Meegan, on Flickr
From FR24 playback, the only A380 at the time near Dublin was British Airways flight 286 from SFO to LHR at 39000 ft.
The trail is reminiscent to this OP photo:
A380 Contrail by Ken Meegan, on Flickr
From FR24 playback, the only A380 at the time near Dublin was British Airways flight 286 from SFO to LHR at 39000 ft.
The trail is reminiscent to this OP photo:
Trailspotter
Senior Member.
A new occurrence of the solitary thin trail, spotted on April 8, 2018 in Volgograd, Russia:
https://www.volgograd.kp.ru/online/news/3077034/
I asked the photographer about the time of photo, she said it was 18:20 Moscow time = 15:20 UTC. This makes Lufthansa Airbus A380, Flight LH760 Frankfurt -> Delhi, the most likely culprit:
LH760 track (KML attached) matches well the location of the photo:
The plane was exiting the jet stream at the time and could have encountered clear-air turbulence:
https://earth.nullschool.net/#2018/...thographic=42.35,51.85,1883/loc=44.706,48.576
https://www.volgograd.kp.ru/online/news/3077034/
I asked the photographer about the time of photo, she said it was 18:20 Moscow time = 15:20 UTC. This makes Lufthansa Airbus A380, Flight LH760 Frankfurt -> Delhi, the most likely culprit:
LH760 track (KML attached) matches well the location of the photo:
The plane was exiting the jet stream at the time and could have encountered clear-air turbulence:
Last edited:
Via Email from Estonia:
Date Time Digitized: Feb 17, 2019 at 1:25:58 PM
Date Time Digitized: Feb 17, 2019 at 1:27:03 PM
These are interesting as they show the solitary hybrid contrail pulling away from the conventional exhaust contrail. The close up also makes it very obvious that it's a hybrid contrail (a portion of the exhaust contrail entrained and amplified by the wake vortices). It has the classic explosive unraveling of the vortex as seen in this video of mine (which shows a more normal pair of vortices):
Source: https://youtu.be/nfwejwWlmt4
Date Time Digitized: Feb 17, 2019 at 1:25:58 PM
Date Time Digitized: Feb 17, 2019 at 1:27:03 PM
These are interesting as they show the solitary hybrid contrail pulling away from the conventional exhaust contrail. The close up also makes it very obvious that it's a hybrid contrail (a portion of the exhaust contrail entrained and amplified by the wake vortices). It has the classic explosive unraveling of the vortex as seen in this video of mine (which shows a more normal pair of vortices):
Source: https://youtu.be/nfwejwWlmt4
Trailspotter
Senior Member.
Is the time local or UTC? What was the location?
If it was local time, there were two A380s crossing the Estonian airspace at around 11:25 UTC that day, both following essentially the same route and passing on the sun's side of the capital Tallinn and the second populous city Tartu.
Some more info via email:
I'm not entirely sure what he means with his second email.External Quote:
Trailspotter
Senior Member.
As the photos had been taken by a smartphone, the time is almost certainly local (UTC+2). This is confirmed by the sun position in the photo from the identified camera location. All this makes the Emirates EK202 flight by A380 A6-EDY being the most likely culprit:
It takes about six minutes from plane passing to its contrail developing squiggles of such amplitude.
There was a strong tailwind, as the aircraft was following the jet stream during this part of the flight.
And, yes, there were good conditions for contrail formation at the flight altitude:
https://earth.nullschool.net/#2019/...thographic=23.11,58.17,3000/loc=24.683,59.380
Last edited:
effalumper
New Member
Spotted in the sky above Haarlem, Netherlands 2021-12-21 at about 15:20... it was a cold (-2 C) frosty but very clear day...
Nice shot. These are very recognizable wone you know what you are looking for. You can see the spinning vortices where the trail thicken slightly.
Trailspotter
Senior Member.
Which direction was the camera pointing at while taking this photo?
Reacher-Said-Nothing
New Member
Hi All,
Happy new year, happy 2024. I am new to this forum, and to be frank I had been completely oblivious to...looks at thread name... sinusoidal thin contrails being an actual thing until three days ago when I witnessed it. After some googling, I was relieved to learn it is not something sinister, and I'm close to certain my fellow travellers (it happened on a bus ride) were equally confused/concerned about it.
So here it is.
Location: I gaze a lot at the sky. The topic of vapour trail visibility has long intrigued me, but I have never been able to fully understand the furthest distance a human would be able to see a vapour trail, so I may be a bit vague/off here with my description and below depiction. At any rate, what I can certainly tell is that the photo I am attaching to this post (cut out of a video my wife made with an iPhone 11) is from main road 74, riding a long distance bus in Hungary. I know, handful of nothing, so to make it easier: the phenomenon was certainly visible between Győrvár and Vasvár, you should look at the middle section of the AT/HU border. We were heading N/NW, and this window is on the left, so, as evidenced by the Sun, this is something of a W/NW direction, I guess.
Other info: clear skies, no major meteorological events, pleasant 10°C, on the ground, that is. Date was 2023/12/30 ~15:00-15:30 CET (UTC+1). I'm not that good with reconciling what I see in reality with what I see on Flightradar, so don't have flight candidates, sorry.
A final remark. While I don't have evidence to back it up, the majority of contrails (during that time window) were really...odd, following a slightly squiggly, sine function-like pattern, but none of them were outrageous, maybe mildly interesting at most. This, however, was the undisputed the cherry on the top. The pictures don't do justice, we were late with the video....
Happy new year, happy 2024. I am new to this forum, and to be frank I had been completely oblivious to...looks at thread name... sinusoidal thin contrails being an actual thing until three days ago when I witnessed it. After some googling, I was relieved to learn it is not something sinister, and I'm close to certain my fellow travellers (it happened on a bus ride) were equally confused/concerned about it.
So here it is.
Location: I gaze a lot at the sky. The topic of vapour trail visibility has long intrigued me, but I have never been able to fully understand the furthest distance a human would be able to see a vapour trail, so I may be a bit vague/off here with my description and below depiction. At any rate, what I can certainly tell is that the photo I am attaching to this post (cut out of a video my wife made with an iPhone 11) is from main road 74, riding a long distance bus in Hungary. I know, handful of nothing, so to make it easier: the phenomenon was certainly visible between Győrvár and Vasvár, you should look at the middle section of the AT/HU border. We were heading N/NW, and this window is on the left, so, as evidenced by the Sun, this is something of a W/NW direction, I guess.
Other info: clear skies, no major meteorological events, pleasant 10°C, on the ground, that is. Date was 2023/12/30 ~15:00-15:30 CET (UTC+1). I'm not that good with reconciling what I see in reality with what I see on Flightradar, so don't have flight candidates, sorry.
A final remark. While I don't have evidence to back it up, the majority of contrails (during that time window) were really...odd, following a slightly squiggly, sine function-like pattern, but none of them were outrageous, maybe mildly interesting at most. This, however, was the undisputed the cherry on the top. The pictures don't do justice, we were late with the video....
New Example:
Source: https://www.facebook.com/wolfgang.halbritter.9/posts/pfbid02Yyn3nrtJ4Qfr15AwYQz1iNiqELEiPDF5uPEsBgev9Mrz5mzmAzeV3VqvNYSwPcnfl
Source: https://www.facebook.com/wolfgang.halbritter.9/posts/pfbid02Yyn3nrtJ4Qfr15AwYQz1iNiqELEiPDF5uPEsBgev9Mrz5mzmAzeV3VqvNYSwPcnfl
(Presumable Dec 30 2023)External Quote:
Trailspotter
Senior Member.
I had a look at the satellite view of that area to see if there were any clues. The timestamps on the pink line are the time in UTC that the satellite passed over, so this is about 1 hour before the Austrian sighting and 2-2.5 hours before the Hungarian one.
There are quite pronounced wave patterns in the clouds to the north, and there are bands of cirrus and contrail fragments to the south (and over the region of Hungary where the other photo was taken.
Closer view:
I can't pick out any of the sinusoidal trails but I wonder if the wave patterns in the clouds are linked with this? Presumably some kind of mountain wave effect.
There are quite pronounced wave patterns in the clouds to the north, and there are bands of cirrus and contrail fragments to the south (and over the region of Hungary where the other photo was taken.
Closer view:
I can't pick out any of the sinusoidal trails but I wonder if the wave patterns in the clouds are linked with this? Presumably some kind of mountain wave effect.
Trailspotter
Senior Member.
Thin contrails are too narrow to be visible in the weather satellite images. The cloud formations probably were at much lower altitudes than the sinusoidal trail, and their wave patterns were not necessarily due to a mountain effect. I recall seeing similar patterns over flat plains and over sea as well.
Last edited:
Not the most interesting example, but it's a solitary contrail. I was out kayaking and saw this with some better sinusoidal waves, but by the time I got my camera out it was less interesting.
Here's the full trail, plane included:
And zooming in on the start:
The trail that vanished was the upper/right one.
FatPhil
Senior Member.
I had an interesting one on the earlier this week as I was walking to my local, but alas the photo I hastily-but-not-hastily-enough took is pure garbage.
The sky was almost perfectly clear, just one single contral was visible, and it had a noticeable dotted-line/corkscrew pattern in it. Neat, I thought, and I continued merrily across the town square. And then I noticed that the part of the contrail that should have been behind a building wasn't there at all. So it was something like this:
Clearly the conditions were right on the cusp for contrail formation. Super neat, I thought, and I remembered this thread. I noticed that the bit of the corkscrew that I could still see was fading considerably, so I rushed back to where I could see more of it, and took a snap. The corkscrew had all but gone, and I didn't have a steady hand, and my phone's 14 years old. So no image uploads for you lot. I still remember it though, so I can't complain.
The sky was almost perfectly clear, just one single contral was visible, and it had a noticeable dotted-line/corkscrew pattern in it. Neat, I thought, and I continued merrily across the town square. And then I noticed that the part of the contrail that should have been behind a building wasn't there at all. So it was something like this:
Code:
=============== ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ --------=======X
normal contrail gap dotted corkscrew thinning normalSimilar threads
