Contrails Over Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio (MODIS 2026-03-28)

Long thin clouds streaked the skies over the U.S. Midwest on March 26, 2026, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired this true-color image. Theses linear clouds, known as “contrails,” crisscross in the skies between three major cities: Indianapolis, Indiana in the northwest; Cincinnati, Ohio in the northeast; and Louisville, Kentucky, in the south. Contrails are formed when humid air emitted from jet engines mixes with cooler air in the surrounding environment. Although it is easy to imagine that contrails are just streams of pollutants trailing airplanes, they are actually mostly ice crystals. When extra water vapor from the jet exhaust rapidly saturates the air in the environment, the water condenses and freezes into tiny ice crystals. Most commercial jets cruise along at 26,000 feet or higher, where temperatures are so cold that the emitted vapor rapidly and very effectively condenses. The more formal name for these icy linear clouds is “condensation trail”, which speaks to the way they are formed.

Date

March 26, 2026

Mapmaker / publisher

MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC

Archive

Wikimedia Commons

Type

map

Original size

2,318 × 1,651 pixels

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