X in the skies by planes

I moved to Amsterdam a year ago, love it. such a beautiful city. not just in my eyes but in everyone’s eye. that is why its a place that attracts tons of tourists from all over the world; many flights come to Amsterdam every day because of that.

Which brought me to realize something after a while of staying there. if you look in the sky, you always find a plane flying that leaves behind a trail of cloud-like in the sky.

Most of the time those trails actually cross making an X like shape. then I wondered, is that on purpose? cause it makes no sense that it’s just a coincidence in the vast space of the sky.

So I dug in and did some research.

But, before jumping to conclusions and opinions that the online community is exploding with. let’s explain the fundamentals needed.

How are clouds formed

You know when it’s too cold sometimes that you can see your breath when you’re breathing while freezing. the same thing happens up there. when the humid hot jet exhaust mixes with the atmosphere up there in the sky, that vapor coming out from the jet is condensed and will freeze if conditions are met and this process of jet vapor being frozen causes the clouds (in simple words).

Now those clouds have different shapes and styles depends on how are they created. whether it was natural by the spread vapor in the air that freezes and causes the long-widely spread clouds or sometimes as we said because of jets and jets clouds cause many different styles as well depending on the jets and how they function.

But those are the main cloud types:

Cumulus
Stratus
Stratocumulus
Altocumulus
Nimbostratus
Altostratus
Cirrus
Cirrocumulus
Cirrostratus
and more…

Now that you understand how clouds are made, I’ll explain what people talk about regarding the options of this X in the sky.

Its mainly 2 options:

Chemtrail

Wikipedia explained this very well

The chemtrail conspiracy theory is based on the erroneous[1] belief that long-lasting condensation trails are “chemtrails” consisting of chemical or biological agents left in the sky by high-flying aircraft, sprayed for nefarious purposes undisclosed to the general public.[2] Believers in this conspiracy theory say that while normal contrails dissipate relatively quickly, contrails that linger must contain additional substances.[3][4] Those who subscribe to the theory speculate that the purpose of the chemical release may be solar radiation management,weather modification, psychological manipulation, human population control, or biological or chemical warfare, and that the trails are causing respiratory illnesses and other health problems.Read more about it in here

Contrails

Alternatively called vapor trails, are basically the water condensation caused by flight jets that were created due to the reasons we explained in the paragraph above (How are clouds formed).

Those Jets Contrails have many shapes as you can see in the picture above which depends on the type of plane and jets used in it and the movement of that plane.

p.s: I’ve added below a simulator to show the contrail

http://contrailscience.com/contrail-simulations/

X in the sky

After discussing how clouds are made and the theories behind jet clouds, Its time for us to reach a conclusion.

Air traffic is higher than some might think, if you look at the picture below you can see that its too crowded up there and the propability of 2 planes routes intersecting at a certain point is very high.

referenced from [https://www.visualcapitalist.com/air-traffic-network-map/](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/air-traffic-network-map/)

Having in mind that some of those planes will not meet the contrail’s perfect condition (the altitude, jet hardware, .. so on).but. some will and those that do meet the conditions will leave a trail behind while another plane also will leave that. leaving the sky with what looks like an X.

Now, do note that this happening has a way higher chance in super touristic places like Amsterdam, New York,… etc.