WeedWhacker
Senior Member
Once you determine a trail to be persistent, it must obviously have been hanging around quite a while.
Consequentially, the plane that had created it may have been gone already.
Also, along that reasoning, the contrail WILL drift with any prevailing winds aloft, at the altitude of formation. Current winds based on regularly scheduled radiosonde readings can be found here (this is NOT the only source, however):
http://weather.uwyo.edu/upperair/sounding.html
Adding, and yes more of that pesky technical stuff, and facts and everything:
A visualization of the actual "network" of upper level jet Airways in the Northeast Region. I will center the link on Newark, NJ...but note that (like Google Maps) this can be slewed, zoomed in/out, etc:
http://skyvector.com/?ll=40.69257881822418,-74.16870117048495&chart=304&zoom=3
( Almost resembles a street map of London? )
For easier "landlubber" orientation, here is the same area, nearly the same scale, but with more visual landmarks for reference:
http://skyvector.com/?ll=40.638411552472256,-73.90722655590139&chart=301&zoom=6
NOTE that it will be necessary to zoom in and slew around, to aid in local orientation. (It is MUCH easier when one has the actual paper Charts in one's hand...unless you are lucky enough to have a very big screen monitor?).
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