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Circular contrails south of Dallas/Fort Worth

By Scott Bachmeier •

5-minute GOES-19 Red Visible (0.64 µm, left) along with Near-Infrared “Cirrus” (1.38 µm), Mid-level Water Vapor (6.9 µm) and Clean Infrared Window (10.3 µm) images (right), from 1256-1501 UTC on 16 March; rawinsonde sites are plotted in red, while airport identifiers are plotted in gray [click to play MP4 animation]

5-minute GOES-19 (GOES-East) Visible, Near-Infrared “Cirrus”, Mid-level Water Vapor and Clean Infrared Window images (above) displayed a set of curved contrails that formed south-southeast of Dallas/Fort Worth — created by 2 passenger aircraft in holding patterns, before eventually landing at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport (KIAH) — which then drifted southeast toward the Texas coast on the morning of 16 March 2026.

The curved contrails were also seen in GOES-19 True Color RGB images from the CSPP GeoSphere site (below).

5-minute GOES-19 True Color RGB images, from 1301-1501 UTC on 16 March [click to play MP4 animation]

Flight track maps from FlightAware showed the holding pattern ovals taken by 2 United Airlines flights (at altitudes of 32000-33000 ft) northwest of KIAH (below).

UAL1450 fight track map [click to enlarge]


UAL1464 flight track map [click to enlarge]

A plot of rawinsonde data from Fort Worth at 1200 UTC (below) showed a moist layer from 294-217 hPa (30000-36000 ft), where these contrails likely developed and persisted.

Plot of rawinsonde data from Fort Worth, Texas at 1200 UTC on 16 March [click to enlarge]

Other examples of circular contrails have been previously documented on this blog.

Categories: Aviation, General interpretation, GOES-19, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images