Does anyone find it unusual that plane exhaust whether harmful or not can turn the whole sky white?

Question

Does anyone find it unusual that plane exhaust whether harmful or not can turn the whole sky white?

Answer 1

its not exhaust. its just water vapor. just like a cloud.

Answer 2

No, that is the norm. Engine exhaust has water in it and it is hot. It turns to ice when it cools.

Answer 3

no - its a Vapor trail

Answer 4

no

Answer 5

Yes, but it does happen sometimes when the temperature-dew point spread aloft is small and the Sun angle is low.  A plane's contrails shade and cool nearby air and more condensation results.  That cloud does the same thing and gradually the cloud layer covers most of the observer's sky.

Answer 6

What you are seeing is a mixture of contrails and cirrus clouds.  The same atmospheric conditions that promote contrails are also conducive to cirrus clouds.

So it's not unusual or mysterious.  It's just condensing water vapor turning to ice crystals.

Answer 7

erm... I think that's clouds... and the sky is blue...

It's a vapour trail, not harmful, vapour as in water...

Answer 8

the phenomena of wispy white clouds forming behind a high-altitude plane is known as a contrail... it happens when the hot exhaust, which is rich in moisture, hits the below-freezing atmosphere, it forms forms instantly into minute ice crystals, similar to how a cirrus cloud is formed (moisture gets high in the atmosphere and freezes)...the fact that the air gets colder by three degrees fahrenheit per 1000 feet of altitude explains why you normally only see them high in the atmosphere and not closer to ground level.

they are harmless and really good to  watch if you like plane-spotting and aviation...

Answer 9

The white that you see is call a contrail, and it is made of ice crystals from the water vapor in the jet's exhaust. Jet aircraft use kerosene as fuel and water vapor is a major exhaust component.

If you look closely at contrails, you will see that they create a rainbow when the sun hits them at a straight line, relative to you.

The ice acts as prisms, splitting up the white light into its components, just like a glass prism would do.

Even B-17's and B-29's and other  prop aircraft left contrails, as gasoline also leaves water vapor as an exhaust component.

There is nothing unusual in this. It is nature's laws at work.

Regards,

Dan