On Monday, November 23, 2015 at 9:54:13 AM UTC, Bernard Burton wrote:
"David Mitchell" wrote in message
...
A Norwich to Aberdeen flight is just overhead at 36000 feet with a contrail
clearly below the cloud cover.
Is this an apparition? And am I really unobservant, because it's something
I don't recall seeing before?


My first question is, can you be sure that the contrail you can see is being
produced by the flight you claim?. Sometimes is this area I have counted an
many as 8 aircraft simultaneously criss-crossing at many different levels,
all above an estimated 20000 ft. My second question, what is the cloud type
to which you refer?.

--
Bernard Burton

Wokingham Berkshire.

Weather data and satellite images at:
http://www.woksat.info/wwp.html



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In answer to the first question, Flightradar 24 app, though a few others appeared in a short period afterwards with the same result.
The cloud would have been cirrostratus, but when I observed it the sun was very low and gave the impression that the cloud was at a lower level and thicker than it actually was. Within half an hour the sun's position revealed the cloud to be higher than I first thought.

And Bernard, if I am reading this correctly, the contrail will "sink" into and appear to merge with the cloud layer? The thing was that it appeared to be lower than the cloud layer, but I took a photo and it's hard to work out what was at what level. Oh well.

And from comments it appears that yes, I am completely not good at observation, or the memory is failing.