Total Blue Out in Central Wisconsin Again

Not a spit, whiff or needle of aviaticus clouds this morning and just an occasional orphan-like clod of natural cloud straggling from the north ahead of the front. We have a nice wide swath of low moisture atmosphere overhead right now. Not looking good for a decent contrail event as the front may move through after sunset. Very little cirrus preceding this front either.

So eyes in the sky on Eagles, returning Sandhill Cranes and Canada Geese and the occasional glint of trailess jet.  

As summer approaches and the atmosphere warms there will be fewer opportunities to view outstanding aviaticus events like yesterday. 

Update:  Wrong! The northern front hooked in from the west and bought a nice looking cloud mix of cumulus with a sheeting cirrus covering. But no aviaticus to be seen:

Then a few short lived trails were spotted darting between the cloud openings:

This is the first Aviaticus cloud, created by a westbound, that persisted. It drifted south for quite awhile but still held a tight form:

Then a surprise first, in the east, a south bound flight from Constantinople Turkey ripped by at 600 mph: (From Flightradar24)

After passing it began to descend and left a segment of persistent cloud (barely seen in lower right below) as it was dropping to between 28-30000':

With all the upper wind and apparent fast movement, no cirrostratus aviaticus formed within my view.

Central Wisconsin Aviaticus Cloud (Contrail) Forecast 3.30.2015

Presently we are clear, blue and brilliant with  barely a whiff or a needle trail to be seen.  Many of the passing traffic this morning are labeled with "No Call Sign" on the ADS-B tracking system.  Later this afternoon areas of the upper atmosphere where natural cirrus may form, the jet traffic should be spitting out short non-persistent trails, these may increase and lengthen as the precipitation low moves in from the west but I don't think there is a great chance to view persistent trails prior to the incoming cloud cover. Map from NOAA site

UPDATE: Pre-front thin clouds moved in early and quickly only several hours after I posted the forecast and with it a half dozen or so persistent trails right at a time when I was too busy driving to track and analyze.

ABOVE FACING SOUTH One trail maker in this shot tracking east to west along the fly way appeared to make a 90 degree turn to the north out of this formation.  As it left the clouds it continued to leave a good trail:

ABOVE FACING WEST I couldn't locate this guy on the Flight Tracker site,  Shortly after this shot was taken the portion of this persistent trail in the photo outside the hazy cloud front began to segment and dissipate in drier or warmer air.  Enlarged this can be seen at the far right of the trail behind the tree branches.

As the cloud front thickened with a bit of uniformity, I shot this partial sun-dog with aviaticus trails:

No short trails at all as I forecasted, the sky went from no trails to persistent trails with the front moving in. 

Learning to Forecast Persistent Contrail Events: Small Town Corp Execs did not like taking the Train

For 16 years I have been back to my home area of Clintonville, Wisconsin, USA. I couldn't wait to leave when I was 17. Blogging about contrail clouds or more specifically aviaticus formations forecasting, I think it is an odd hobby for me.  I'm not a meteorologist or a pilot or a writer but somehow I'm drawn to all three.

In 1942, My great grandfather at age 77, with all his sons at war, worked his farm alone. He got his hand caught in a hay baler and shortly died of lockjaw. The City of Clintonville, (population today still under 5000), where Four Wheel Drive (FWD) Corp was located, was actively pursing a site for a municipal airport. My great grand mother then sold the farm land to the City. The airport was built and Wisconsin Central Airlines was formed by the  execs from FWD. The execs had began their own commuting flight to Green Bay with one Waco Bi-Plane they had acquired by trading one of their company trucks.  They soon found out they could charge other people and thus the airline company was created.  In 1952 they changed its name to North Central Airlines and became a large regional carrier. In 1979 North Central Airlines went national.  They bought Southern Airways and changed their name to Republic Airlines and a year later acquired Hughes Airwest.  Six years later Northwest Airlines bought out Republic and then Northwest merged  with Delta and in 2010 the surviving name was Delta Airlines.   I am now located 14 miles north of the Clintonville and I happened to take notice of the large number of planes that fly over or near Clintonville.  I still do not know if this is a coincidence because of Clintonville's geographical location between Minneapolis, Chicago and Detroit or if it is just a common traditional flyway that has nor changed in 70 years even though there has not been commercial service to Clintonville in many decades.  Now if I turn to face north with my back to Clintonville, there is little traffic to see so I am located in a rural area, on the cusp of a flyway with a great visual view of the sky traffic and Aviaticus clouds the traffic creates.

As I am writing this Flight ACA6 Boeing 777 from Tokyo to Toronto passes over Clintonville, WI

North of Clintonville, Wisconsin there is not much air traffic to view as shown from the example screen shot below

Not only is the air traffic easily viewed and tracked from my location because I for the most part need only look south.  In addition. the prevailing weather almost always runs west to east.  This is why this is such a good area to observe aircraft and weather patterns in order to learn to forecast persistent contrail events. (PCE)

A Full Day of Spotless Blue Skies & Today's Aviaticus (Contrail) Forecast

Lots of air traffic today on our Fly Way but not a whiff or needle of contrail (aviaticus clouds) to be seen. I was up at Legend Lake in Menominee County for an hour and did see one commercial jet pass over overhead, a rare occurrence.  The sun was so bright that without the dead quite of this northern woods I may not even have seen or have heard it pass over.

Earlier just south of Legend Lake in Shawano, the radar showed the normal fly way traffic mostly from Minneapolis to eastern destinations and the many Eastern flights that pass by us heading west, the usual flights from Asia that crossed over or through Alaska before tracking southward to Chicago.  Yet not a whiff of aviaticus to be seen all day. Despite all this aircraft activity even the the small town noise of Shawano over-tones the purr of high altitude aircraft, making them difficult to to spot.

A shot of today's sky, all day Friday:)!

Tomorrow's Aviaticus Cloud Forecast

Trails developing only with a little luck late Saturday afternoon as snow is predicted that evening and if east/west air traffic will still be busy. The front should move in from the west and may be preceded by high altitude moist air. Aviation Trails should appear in my location looking south to Clintonville just before sunset.  Some could be light and unlikely to spread into cirrostratus aviaticus before dark.

We should have a clearing Monday and Tuesday and may then have the best day for Aviation trails, just before natural cirrus clouds appear.

UPDATE:  By 3:00 PM Saturday, a west bound flight. a McDonald Douglas MD 90 NY to Minneapolis passed overhead and then started to spit out intermittent dashings of needle thin aviaticus clouds which shortly thereafter turned into steady short contrail. After that all westbound flights started contrailing as they reached that line but only those between 32-34000'.  The higher altitude flights did not form any aviaticus clouds and were much more difficult to visually locate in the cloudless brilliant blue sky.

Watch for Aviaticus Cloud Forecasts in Weather Media Soon

I spent a few minutes on a humorous site from the Netherlands last night. It is in Dutch of course but easily translated. They had numerous photos of TV meteorologists announcing the clear blue skies or saying 'not a cloud in the sky today', but the skies were completely scared with man-made Aviaticus Clouds in the background displays. Funny of course but watch for a change soon in the forecasting media. 

The TV meteorologists soon will be schooled in how to describe these man-made clouds. Both Cirrus Aviaticus clouds and Cirrostratus Aviaticus clouds, those contrails that spread to form the milky sheets, will become even more prevalent with the continued increase in air travel that is taking place.  Due to high airline profits, all jet manufacturers appear to be swamped with new orders of aircraft.  (Brazil's Embraer included and the explanation for their low stock price may be the present social and political conditions)  The term 'Aviation Smog" is used on the Dutch site. Due to the cold air, high pressure areas and moisture saturation that far north, they really have more than their share of these man-made cirrus clouds, historically referred to as contrails and more recently as chemtrails by conspiracy folks.  

Screen shot from flightradar24 display in early morning:

Soon we will see contrail descriptions and photos as part of the weather shows as well as forecasts of the clouds.  (They are not hard to predict for even a layman).  One scientific study I found attempted to determine if these aviaticus clouds would actually cool the atmosphere but there is the reverse theory also, that the aviaticus clouds reflect the heat back to earth, thus warming would occur. The study concluded that there was no effect.  Now future studies will be politicized; the airlines industry I would guess will want to show studies that indicate there is no effect or a cooling effect, environmentalist another view, skeptic & conspiracy folks another, FAA out of self-preservation I would guess will want to be neutral, carbon credit advocates another view. We'll have to sort out the truth ourselves.