Where are all the Chemtrail Photos?
Some people think that persistent spreading contrails are somehow unusual, and are actually something dangerous being deliberately sprayed on the US people by the government, or perhaps for weather control purposes. They call these persistent contrails “chemtrails”.
Some of them are very insistent that this is a practically constant assault, saying the sky is never blue any more, and there are “chemtrails” constantly criss-crossing the sky.
I think this is simply a case of observer bias.
It’s easy to amass a large collection of photos of persistent contrails. I’ve got a lot myself, and I live in Los Angeles, where we don’t really get very many days when the conditions are right. All you have to do is only take photos on days when there are contrails persisting, and it will seem like there are “chemtrails” every day.
To get a real picture of what is going on, you need to take photos every day, and then see how many have persistent contrails in them. To be really accurate, you should take photos all across the country, and even across the globe, and see how many have contrails in them. What we need is a huge database of photos of the sky taken at random places and times.
Luckily, with the advent of digital photography, we have several such databases in the form of Flickr.com and picasaweb.google.com, and several other sites, which contain millions of photos that have at least some sky in them.
How many contain contrails (persistent or otherwise?) well, it turns out that practically none of them do.
Of course if you search for “contrail” or “chemtrail”, you’ll find a bunch. But that’s just you selecting them. How do we get random photos of the sky?
A good way it to search for things where the photographer is looking up. Like, “skyscraper“, “radio tower“, “kites“, or “skyline“. This gives you a very nice random sampling of millions of photos of the sky in all different weather condition, in all different locations, over the past decade or so. Some of these tend to have a narrow field of view, which you can expand with the keyword “fisheye”, like “fisheye sky“.
And what do we find? ALMOST NO CONTRAILS!!! I had to look at hundreds of photos before I finally found ONE that had a contrail in it. Even more rare was finding a photo with several persisting contrails, and I never found one with anything like a “grid”.
Several things can be deduced from this. Firstly contrails are actually pretty rare across the country. Of course this depends on where you live, but basically on average, there are not that many visible contrails in the sky.
Secondly, there’s still lots of clear blue sky and fluffy white clouds. All kinds of skies actually. Nothing has changed.
Thirdly, “chemtrail” theorists often say “why are there no photo of contrails before 1999/1990/1980/whenever”, seeing as they can’t find any in their family photo albums. The answer is of course that there ARE photos of contrails, all through the history of aviation. You don’t see them in the old photo albums for the same reason you don’t see them on Flickr.
Friday 26 Oct 2007 | Uncinus | chemtrails, contrails, science
You speak like a government stooge or an ignoramous. I live in london (UK) and we get these things practically everyday. who knows why or what they are but they are not normal - do your research.
gman, London is under a lot of flight paths - including those from Europe to North America, but also from Continental Europe to Northern England, Scotland and Ireland. So, you’ll get more contrails than a lot of places do, and also get the “grid” pattern where the paths cross. Regional air traffic has increased a lot in the past decade in Europe.
Since the planes fly over daily, you will indeed get contrails every day, lots of them. If the weather is right they will persist and sometimes even spread out to cover the sky. This is normal, and has been reported and photographed since the beginning of high altitude aviation in the 1940’s. See:
http://contrailscience.com/persisting-and-spreading-contrails/
I am now building three large cloudbusters, using Willhelm Reich’s original plans. I built a mini test version earlier this year and tried it when the sky was full of “chemtrails” or “contrails” or whatever you call ‘em. The sky cleared of trails pretty quickly. Within an hour or so beautiful white natural clouds started to form, and all the messy haze dissipated completely, leaving a natural deep blue color.
I am opposed to the trails primarily on aesthetic grounds. Our beautiful tremendous skies are sacred, and this desecration is simply not acceptable - regardless of the cause, the reason(s) or what you or anyone chooses to call them.
Anyway, if all goes well, I plan to commercially produce the cloudbusters, and will sell them at a reasonable price worldwide through a website. Once every city, town and village has one, this ugly phenomenon will be a thing of the past, and we can all enjoy once again the incredible beauty of earth’s natural skies, as God intended.
Creating positive orgone in any area will also help to eradicate any form of pollution, which is dependent on a matrix of negative energy (DOR).
Cleaning up the skies is going to be part of the wider and more extensive cleansing process which is necessary as we approach 2012. The Day of Purification is indeed fast approaching.
Jerry Montgomery
Jerry, I’m afraid I think “orgone” is nonsense.
You should do some proper scientific tests. What happened one day is simply observer bias.
Clouds are always forming, clearing, dispersing and changing. It’s the weather.
The people who put Wilhelm Reich in prison thought “Orgone” was nonsense too. Truth is, of course, they knew he was onto something major. That’s why they had to get rid of him, and why they destroyed his orgone accumulators and burned his books and papers. They got rid of him physically, but his spirit lives on, and will, of course, prevail, as will all things that are life-contributive.
“Orgone” is simply qi or chi as the Chinese understood it; as a practitioner of qi gong, I can assure you it is not nonsense.
If these trails are what you claim they are - merely contrails - then it is, I take it, a matter of utter indifference to you whether they appear in the sky or not, and that you will have no objection, therefore, to me clearing the skies of them, and encouraging other people to do likewise.
Perception is reality. But science is more objective.
In my reading of your page i find that you must be mildly uneducated and quite ingnorant of what is going on in our skies. Much more than just pictures are being taken. Samples of this chemical spray have been tested and linked to cases of Morgellons. Contraisl dissipate in mere seconds to barely a minute behind fast moving planes who are leaving vapor. The trails i snap pictures of and see almost EVERY day of the year hang in the sky for hours until they blow out of site. The trails make it all the way to the ground and can be seen almost until the point of touch down. Now you may say that I am looking for chemtrails in the sky, but the fact of the matter is, I cannot look up without seeing them and the persistence increases more and more with each passing day. Not to mention the increase in the amount of times my friends and family are getting sick. To see some pictures that i have taken please visit my site at http://www.myspace.com/indigochildren11 Look in the pics section. much <3
Joshua, you say: “Contraisl dissipate in mere seconds to barely a minute behind fast moving planes who are leaving vapor.“. Unfortunately that seems to be a common misunderstanding of contrails, since all sources agree that only SOME contrails do this. If the weather is right, they will persist and even spread out. See:
http://contrailscience.com/persisting-and-spreading-contrails/
In particular the quote from the encyclopedia:
All the encyclopedias agree, and they always have. Contrails have always varied in how long they persist.
Well it seems like you’ve really stirred up the chemtrail folks. I can’t believe that they’re calling you “uneducated” when you’ve really done your homework and can actually point to facts when backing up your argument. I’d just like to chime in and say nice work. The problem is, these folks will always be around, when they give up on contrails, they’ll probably find government-built robo-mosquitos or something. Oh well, there’s my $.02
Uncinus the question I have for you is I understand why all the websites for chemtrails… if they exist it’s just bad. But why would somene make an extensive website like this one about contrails? I mean who would take the time and for what purpose?
Because it’s interesting. People blog about all kinds of things, and I like meteorology.
What’s really interesting is that nobody even questions any of the points I make here. inmate1943, besides being suspicious of my motives, is there anything actually WRONG here? Any facts I got wrong?
Excuse me, Uncinus.
inmate1943 said, “Uncinus the question I have for you is I understand why all the websites for chemtrails… if they exist it’s just bad.”
You muppet! The bigger mystery is why all the chemtrail sites? There are no “chemtrails”. They DON’T exist. Jet exhaust condensation DOES exist, and in many different forms. And that’s what this site is about. Get it?
Thanks Uncinus.
I have an open mind about Chemtrails/contrails/whatever and am sad to find your site doesn’t convince me. I wish someone would set my mind at ease about this by presenting clear evidence. Where I live, in the Pacific Northwest, they are NOT rare. They are here about 355 days out of the year. I am not in a major flight path. And I have grids here all summer long. It doesn’t make sense and you are very unconvincing. As for everyone being sick, it’s mostly from the garbage in our food, such as melamine, lead, hydrogenated fats and natural flavors. If they are poisoning us from the air, I’m sure it’s doing a good job of adding fuel to the fire. And Dude, do you really believe there aren’t people out to kill us? I can give you quotes all day long from the likes of Prince Andrew and his Above-Us-All ilk about how they need to eliminate 80 percent of the population and the sooner the better.
Cyber2ooth, I’d be interested to know more exactly where you live, as there are not that many places that get consistent grids. I have noticed that Southern Oregon seems to get a lot more persistent contrails than Los Angeles. I suspect they are more common in the North, due to the more frequent cold wet weather.
There is actually a lot of cross traffic in Washington State, so it’s kind of hard to say if you are in a major flight path or not. Certainly if you live anywhere within 100 miles of the coast, you will be overflow by a lot of north-south traffic. If you tell me the name of somewhere near you, I can tell you what flight paths cross nearby. Do you have any photos of the denser grids you’ve seen?
I live near Rockford, IL. I’m definitely not worried that I’m being poisoned, since I’ve spent most of my time outdoors breathing that air and I’m in great health, but I’d still like to solve this little mystery.
The small airport in Rockford doesn’t generate anywhere near the amount of air traffic we receive overhead. Now, one might say, “they’re flying to/from Chicago,” but that is where the real mystery begins, because the routes aren’t consistent with a commercial flight schedule. What I mean by that statement is that on some days there might be 20-30 planes leaving persistent contrails overhead, and then a few days with none at all. They usually leave parallel east/west lines and occasionally V’s or X’s, but in the 10 years I’ve been here I’ve never seen a grid.
Uncinus wrote, “If the weather is right, they will persist and even spread out.”
The persistent contrails in this area aren’t particular about the weather. I’m an avid hiker/cycler and whether it’s Spring, Summer, Fall, or Winter they’re here, and they persist for hours. In fact, in the last 5 years the only aircraft I’ve seen that don’t leave a persistent contrail, are those I’ve actually seen flying to and from the local airport.
Something else of interest is that you can sometimes hear the plane that’s leaving the persistent contrail. I live about 20 miles from the airstrip, so if the regular flights from the local airstrip could be heard I’d certainly know. Furthermore, any air traffic low enough to be heard that loudly shouldn’t be leaving a contrail, persistent or otherwise.
Paul, those are very astute observations, you’ve obviously put some thought into it, and I’ll try to address your questions.
It’s unlikely that the Chicago traffic has much to do with contrail formation over Rockford. Chicago is only 60 miles away, which is barely enough time for the big jets to get to altitude. No, the traffic you are seeing is flying between more distant airports. In your case it’s most likely traffic between Denver and the Detroit, New York and Boston area airports. As you noticed, most of the traffic is east-west. The reason you don’t get much north-south contrails is that there are very little to the north of you, which is why you do not get a grid.
Have a look at this diagram, made from FAA recordings of actual aircraft positions.
http://contrailscience.com/images/1_1024chicagodot.jpg
The red dot is you, the green dot is Denver, and the yellow dots are Boston and New York. You can also make out San Francisco and Los Angeles on the West coast. Hopefully you can see from this both the vast variety in air traffic routes, and also the way planes at altitude would be flying over your town. Looking at the map should also tell you regions of the country which are most likely to get the “grid” pattern.
Why some days and not others - the same commercial airlines fly overhead every day, at about the same time. Yes, it’s the weather. But not the weather on the ground. It’s the weather at 25,000 to 35,000 feet. See this link:
http://www.usairnet.com/cgi-bin/Winds/Aloft.cgi?location=SPI&Submit=Get+Forecast&hour=06&course=azimuth
It’s the forecast at altitude for near you. It will vary, but when I just looked at it, at 30,000 feet the winds were 101 mph and the temperature was -49F. That is not at all unusual. The wind is usually around 100mph, and it’s usually very cold, even in summer. Think about it, the air at ground level is moving say 10 mph, but the air above is moving at 100 mph. Obviously the weather is going to be very different from the weather on the ground. The key is humidity - which as you can imagine, can change rapidly when the air mass as a whole is moving at 100 mph.
It’s not impossible you heard the plane making a contrail. It’s only six miles away (up) - so if you were away from the city, then that’s certainly possible. Jet engines are very loud - and you can imagine if there were no other noise, then it would be audible from six miles away. You could have also be hearing another plane you did not see (if it were lower, it would not be leaving a trail).
Uncinus, I appreciate that you took the time to reply, and made your points clearly and succinctly. Especially given some of the hostility I’ve seen from both sides of this discussion on some sites.
Uncinus linked:
http://contrailscience.com/images/1_1024chicagodot.jpg
I’m about 115 miles Northwest of the red dot. So, the image is a little too dense to see anything over my location. Where can I find a larger copy?
Uncinus linked:
http://www.usairnet.com/cgi-bin/Winds/Aloft.cgi?location=SPI&Submit=Get+Forecast&hour=06&course=azimuth
I like it! I noticed their data originates with NOAA, and I use NOAA for all of my weather forecasts. I definitely need to dig deeper now that I know wind temperatures & speeds are available. I agree with almost all of the data you provided, except a couple of points that don’t fit what I’ve witnessed.
Uncinus wrote, “the same commercial airlines fly overhead every day, at about the same time.”
I should have explained more clearly in my original post. On days when aircraft fly overhead it’s at regular intervals. However, the air traffic doesn’t fit commercial air traffic on a day-to-day schedule. For example, on Monday and Tuesday you may see 20 aircraft at regular intervals, but on Wednesday and Thursday you see none. No contrails, but no aircraft, either. In this area you can see the aircraft just as well as the contrails. As I’ve frequently witnessed from my balcony. Meaning, I can clearly see the aircraft that’s leaving the contrail, not just the contrail. That actually brings another thought to mind. Why is it so difficult to see the actual aircraft in most of the videos, even when they zoom? Perhaps it’s the video quality, but I digress.
On Friday and Saturday you may see 20 aircraft, again, throughout the day. In fact, this happened frequently enough in the last year that I started questioning, which led me to search for an answer. Perhaps I’m mistaken, but given the amount of time I spend outdoors I have my doubts. I’ll begin keeping a log, so I can more accurately quote their schedule.
Uncinus wrote, “You could have also be hearing another plane you did not see (if it were lower, it would not be leaving a trail).”
The low fliers I’ve witnessed usually leave contrails. I’m not an expert in geometric distance, but in comparison to the usual air traffic, and contrails, they appear about 3 times closer than usual. I haven’t witnessed one in about 2 months, so it shouldn’t be long before another is spotted overhead. I’ll snap a few photos for the site the next time it occurs.
Thanks, again, Uncinus, for the informative reply.
Paul, I got that image from this site:
http://www.aaronkoblin.com/work/flightpatterns/
Which is more of an art site, but was the best I had to hand. But check here:
http://flightaware.com/live/airport/KORD
click on the map with the blue and green planes, and you’ll see traffic in the Chicago area, and I think you are in the top left of the map somewhere. In particular note the green planes, which are the overflying planes. There are two lines of text for each one, the first line is the flight number (or registration number for private planes), and the aircraft type. The second line is the altitude in 100s of feet and the speed in knots (1 knot = 1.15 mph). So 319^ 334 means 31,900 (ascending) and 334 knots (384 mph).
You will notice the green traffic is mostly east west. You can look up individual planes by their flight number on google. Like, right now I see FLG2958 heading your way at 32,000 feet. That’s a flight from Detroit to Cedar Rapids on a Canada Regional Jet.
As for why you see planes some days an not others. Really I suspect it’s just that when there are no contrails forming, then the planes are a lot harder to spot. A jet at 30,000+ feet is quite hard to see without a contrail. Look at the FlightAware map when you think there are no planes. They are still up there.
I live outside of NYC, and I see CHEMTRAILs every single day with little exception. I grew up here, and remember lying under a tree as a kid and looking at the puffy clouds. I only rarely saw contrails– (which was REALLY rare)– and they dissipated immediately. We never had the sky all marked up like we see today.
Recently, I was in a plane heading on vacation, while looking out the window, I saw a jet below us spewing brownish white stuff. It went on for miles and miles. Yet another jet was in the same airspace and there was nothing.
You can see chemtrails from a commercial jet– they look like long white clouds that go in a straight line with tufts on top– and they start to spread out.
You can try to debunk chemtrails, but they’re there… and they need to be stopped.
Hi Brad, what year would that have been in? Have you always lived in the same place?
The memory of childhood skies seems to be the most compelling evidence in favor of the “chemtrail” theory. It’s interesting. Were the skies actually different? Is there any significance to their memories? Could it be tested - ask people a neutral question about the occurrence of contrails?
Your opinions are hilarious… I mean, you’re a funny guy.
You crack me up kid.
I like you and your tunnel vision.
Keep your head up special Ed.
I’m looking out for you.
I’m glad I could brighten your day.
So there’s nothing specifically wrong with what I’m saying? You’d agree that the vast majority of casual photos do NOT show contrails/chemtrails, either now, or in the past?
dear god. if we were under mind control from the skies, why would they let us think about what are all these lines in the sky.
hell, if i were to deliberately poison my entire country i would do it in the food or water were its not sitting around for everyone to see for hours on end.
uncinus, im sorry you have to even disprove this nonsense
Unicus, I’ve found this all interesting. Someone identified a photo I had on Flickr as a ‘chemtrail’ I had never heard of that before. I found your site after a google search.
I have lots of photos of ‘contrails’ and clouds. I like taking pictures of clouds and I like the ‘contrails’ also. I live in the Atlanta metro area so I have lots of contrails and planes to photo.
I appreciate your calm and informative responses to all the ‘chemtrail’ folks here. It’s been very educational.
Uncinus:
United
Nations
Compatriot
Inside
U.S.
I suppose you are a “government employee”
My name, Uncinus, is taken from my favorite type of cloud, Cirrus Uncinus. These clouds form at the same altitude as contrails, and if you see them, then it’s a good indicator that persistent contrails might be forming.
WELL I THINK you are a government shill ,there are alot of you N.W.O. types out here now trying to make the “sheeple” think that what they are really seeing is not what is happening
i spent too many years in the military and spent alot of time flying to know the difference between a CLOUD/CONTRAIL and CHEMICAL SPRAY.
What do you think the difference is?
when i was a kid i could only make faces and animals out of the clouds
now i can play noughts and crosses!!
Hurrah
You know, you can only believe what you see with your own eyes. I see planes spraying, not leaving fuel trails, but thick heavy spraying. But never from commercial planes, they just seem to be unmarked planes. I have seen pictures of inside a chem plane and it has been modified for spraying. And signs that say Hazardous Chemicals above these massive multi tanks of Barium and Aluminum. of course you can say, that could be any military plane, or you’re paranoid. I could say encyclopedia brittanica is a government approved source of information. The internet is the last place where free speech exists, and a place where you can find out about anything. I really hope you are right Uncinus, and it is just harmless contrails, but my instinct and my intellect tell me different. I’m not debating whether you are right or wrong, i am just saying that every time i look up to the sky i see this smear of chemicals, and its addictive. I sit and watch five planes in one day spraying, then they turn the sprays off, and just like you get with any aerosol based spray, it sputters and leaves a wavy trail from the nozzles. Then i follow them as much as i can, and then it gets switched back on and the spraying continues and coincidentally enough, leaves all types of patterns in the skies, lots of crosses, lots of parallel lines, and they just sit their for hours on end, then expand into each other. And i cant see the blue sky anymore, and to me it seems that six days a week they spray heavily, then there is one day a week where they don’t spray, and guaranteed the next day, will have low lying fog just above you, and the most murky grey skies. Personally i believe that this is the drift over from other spraying regions. I took this picture last week, i looked out my kitchen window and it was like something out of lord of the rings, there where black chemtrails in this massive smear below the sun, and you could tell the difference between clouds, sky and chemicals. And i even took a picture……
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=983519&id=12282631069#pid=983522
peace people
Peggy your photo does not look like contrails. It just looks like clouds.
You mentioned trails going on and off. I’ve written about that a couple of times. The main explanations is here:
http://contrailscience.com/broken-contrails/
But I also discussed it in a more recent post, have a look at the satellite photos in the link below - you can see that the trails start as they enter a band of moist air, and then stop when they leave it.
http://contrailscience.com/contrails-above-and-below/
Believe me, i know the difference between clouds and what a plane has been spraying for days. Out my front door was a blue sky, then you follow it down and this thin grey smear, but this day the trails where black. Anyway. you say contrails, i say chemtrails..
by the way, check out Dr Deagle on youtube, he does some really good analysis of chemtrails and their purpose. Plus dude, planes dont have Barium and Aluminum in their fuel tanks do they?
Peggy, obviously you can SEE the difference between different types of contrail. The problem is in your explnation of the CAUSE of the difference.
All the supposed “chemtrails” that I’ve seen photos of look exactly like contrails. They look just like the contrail photos from 1969. They gbehave exactly as you would expect contrails to behave. Sometimes they spread out and cover they sky, exactly like contrails do, exactly as the science books have describe for the last 50 years.
What then is the difference you are seeing? Can you describe what is different from a contrail? Do you have a photo or a video?
Deagle simply repeats the bogus “analysis” that has been reported elsewhere. Human plasma in chemtrails? If there was analysis, there would be a lab report. There is no lab report.
Deagle seems to have unusual sources for his information.
http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2008/02/dr_27.html
Ok, the difference between water vapor and Barium and Aluminum filled symmetrical lines, is that one is a contrail that naturally comes from planes. The other has many different kinds of chemicals in them, hence; Chemtrails.
But since they LOOK exactly the same, then how can YOU tell the difference?
http://youtube.com/watch?v=xVt18U-qOq0
http://youtube.com/watch?v=MVc9GX5K_As
Theres more and more of these
Yes there are alot of misleading videos on YouTube. The first one you link to shows NORMAL levels of Barium in water that someone collected in a bowl left outside on an old pickup truck for a month.
http://contrailscience.com/barium-chemtrails/
The second one is about the use of chaff, and how it affects the weather radar. The word “chemtrail” in the english translation is a mistranslation, and should be “chaff”
There are also a lot of misleading PEOPLE on the internet..
Very true - which is why you need to use science to discern what is most likely to be correct.
i am curious. some one writing you a statement on here claimed to be in the military. said he knew what was actually going on. well i was also military. i have also had a passion for aviation since i was about 4. and i have some very old memories about long stretching contrails… i also remember hazy days that have had few flights. i also know the aircraft i was in charge of, even where i work now. and there are no chemical delivery systems. so i would like to know where that man served.
also. something i find very odd. people love to say that its only military.. or unmarked aircraft.. many airliners are very large. so they seem close. even when far away.. something like alsaka airlines and their smaller horizon airlines. are almost all white. it doesn’t take much distance to make such a paint job appear… unmarked.
i like this web site. very sound observation. study, and only fact. few opinions. few embellishes. just simple. well shown, flat fact
Gasoline is 4 dollars a gallon because of the spraying program. Thousands of jets over the usa 24/7, doing nothing but spraying chemtrails are using a gazillion gallons of fuel, and guess who is paying. Most of the illegal drug money in this country also pays for this. Do you dispute that there are specially outfitted crop duster type jets flying in close proximity making T’s and x’s and 4 across adjacent lines in the skies above America. These are not commercial flights. I called my local airport to report dangerously close flying jets and and the tower guy laughed and knew all about Govt. jets and chemtrails. Why dos’nt the media talk about it(gov. controlled), why has Calif. Gov. Arnold petitioned the black government on the subject? If this is for weather modification, communication, or defense why drop toxins. This is the NWO.
Cheech, the trails look just like regular jet trails that have been around for decades. They are commercial and private flights - just normal air traffic. Certainly not “crop dusters”. I’m afraid that if the tower guy was laughing, then he was probably laughing AT your theory. He’s heard about it because of all the crank calls the tower gets. The whole chemtrail thing is a hoax that took on a life of its own. There’s no evidence to back it up. Sorry.
I respect your opinion; however, why would”normal air traffic” make a concerted effort to fly back and forth and cover large areas of the sky with lines? Sometimes jets are 3 or 4 abreast. I remember when sonic booms were comonplace in the 50s and 60s,and I’ve seen contrails behind jets since then,but its been different in the last 8-10 years. Now the sky is covered in a purposeful manner,there is all day haze,reds,yellows and small random rainbows.Normal air traffic flies from point a to b in a straight line, and FAA rules forbid close proximity of jets.I live near an airport and ALL outgoing traffic is east to west (there is no incomming traffic),except for the jets spraying trails which travel in all directions.Regardless of what this phenomonom is the skies are being cleared up rapidly by cloudbusters and other natural devices. Anyone who feels there may be something to all this should sign the national petition that can be found by Googling chemtrail petition.
Cheech, the airways are very busy now. Many areas of the US have a considerable amount of flyover traffic. Say for example between California and the State of Washington. Much of that flies over the same area, so people in say, Medford OR, get a lot of contrails, even though they are not close to any major airports. In fact, you living near a airport has NOTHING to do with contrails, as those flights will be at too low an altitude to form them.
Or on the other coast, if you live in Connecticut, then you get all the flights from the states north and south of you passing over, as well as all the flights from the rest of the US to and from Europe. There are a LOT of flights.
Planes may LOOK like they are close together, but they will always maintain 1000 vertical feet of separation. That’s not a lot, so from the ground it looks like they are right next to each other (when they are at 32,000 and 33,000 feet, say).
Have a look at this map. It shows all the flights in the US in one day.
http://www.aaronkoblin.com/work/flightpatterns/
If you were to zoom in a take little segments from this map, then, yes, it would indeed look like a grid. But as you can see, it’s simply the normal air traffic between cities.
You also have to account for the wind here. Jets flying along the same route will not leave a contrail in the same place in the air volume as the previous jet. The wind at altitude is often over 100mph, so when the next jet comes along, then the previous contrail will have moved several miles. It LOOKS (from the ground) like the next jet is laying a different trail, to make a grid, but actually it’s just the wind. You can see this in time-lapse video of contrails forming, like this one:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Yqh_03-TFNU