Aircraft dissipation trails drift across Ohio
5-minute GOES-19 Red Visible images (0.64 µm, top) and Near-Infrared “Snow/Ice” images (1.61 µm, bottom), from 1601-1801 UTC on 24 January [click to play MP4 animation]
These distrail features were caused by aircraft that were either ascending through or descending through a cloud layer composed of supercooled water droplets — cooling from wake turbulence (reference) and/or particles from the jet engine exhaust acting as ice condensation nuclei caused the small supercooled water droplets to transform into larger ice crystals (many of which then often fall from the cloud layer). The darker gray appearance of the distrails in 1.61 µm imagery confirmed that those features were composed of ice crystals (since ice is a strong absorber of radiation at that wavelength).
The corresponding GOES-19 Day Cloud Phase Distinction RGB images created using Geo2Grid (below) provided another view of the distrails — the brighter shades of green were indicative of glaciating cloud features. Interestingly, numerous long/narrow contrails were also apparent over the supercooled cloud layer (shades of white) to the south and east of the distrails.
GOES-19 Day Cloud Phase Distinction RGB images, from 1601-1801 UTC on 24 January [click to play animated GIF]