Odd contrails this afternoon...
 

Did anyone see some rather peculiar looking contrails over southern England this afternoon, about 1330-1335Z 29DEC14?

Sorry no picture but I saw them just as they were dissolving. Appeared to be a sequence of lateral oscillations but with mixed up amplitude and frequency. All the other contrails in the sky were dead straight.

I guess the wobbles were in the order of miles or so either way but almost impossible to put a scale on it.

I’ve seen vertical oscillations in contrails when they’ve formed in an area of CAT but not what appeared to be horizontal ones like these. It looked almost like an out-of-control fighter on afterburner pulling 9g turns had left a trail behind. Weird.

I think Radix is mistaken.

Anyway, I didn't see what you've seen today but your observation reminded me of something I saw 9 years ago! It was also over Southern England/London. Till this day, I've not found an explanation.

Here's the pprune thread to which some good ideas were contributed:

http://www.pprune.org/spectators-bal...don-today.html

Not many pictures of it out there but this resembles what I saw back then though only about 4 or 5 oscillations before it went straight again:

http://i62.tinypic.com/2qn48lf.jpg

It looked like a thin contrail that was making sinusoidal wobbles, some reaching nearly 90degs to the direction of the rest of it. Not jagged at all and seemed very “tight”.

I mentioned it on here as I’d never seen anything quite like it, especially in a sky of other contrails as straight as a ruler.

Now now Tin, don't turn this into one of those threads.