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BS: airplane window. baffled. please help
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Subject: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: leeneia Date: 19 Feb 07 - 05:23 PM I am writing a piece about unusual things to be seen from an airplane window. I've been told to "ask my friends" to describe things they saw that baffled them, things that provoked an "aha!" when they were explained. The things seen can vary in glamour from a volcano to a sanitation plant. (I did try to cast a little disfavor on the sanitation plant.) Nonetheless, all ideas are welcome. They do need to be in the United States, though. The prospect of telephoning all the people I know, many of whom live frenetic lives, was daunting. Then I thought, "The Mudcat!" the greatest aggregation of intelligent people anywhere. So please submit any thoughts you may have. I would appreciate it so much. Now to send e-mails to friends and family.... |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: Morticia Date: 19 Feb 07 - 05:30 PM I wonder why the blinds have to be up when you come in to land? |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: Stilly River Sage Date: 19 Feb 07 - 05:41 PM I usually do most of the explaining. I studied geology and geography and worked as a national park ranger in lots of areas around the U.S., and drove across many many times. Makes looking down at all of those familiar places pretty interesting. There have been some "aha!" moments for people who asked the questions, but I don't remember any particular stories at the moment. The strangest thing I saw (but I knew what it was) was right out of one of the Narnia books (Magician's Nephew?). Flying over the Llano Estacado (Texas), west of Amarillo at night after heavy thunderstorms had passed. We were in a clear sky, full moon, and below were hundreds of depressions filled with water that were all reflecting that bright moon back up an us. It was a singular experience! SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: Bee-dubya-ell Date: 19 Feb 07 - 06:12 PM The first time I ever flew at night, I was a little perplexed about what all those brightly lit ovals all over the landscape were. Then it dawned on me that it was a Friday evening in October and that every high school in the US was playing football down there somewhere. |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: katlaughing Date: 19 Feb 07 - 06:19 PM A round rainbow settled on top of the clouds which were below the plane. It was awesome! |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: Ebbie Date: 19 Feb 07 - 06:24 PM One of the first things I marveled about was the occasional dense and spiked plume that jutted well above the clouds that surrounded it. Oh, that and the feeling that the clouds are dense enough to cradle the airliner, if need be. |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: Jim Dixon Date: 19 Feb 07 - 06:51 PM While flying across the North Atlantic, en route from Minnesota to London, early in the morning, in the summer, I looked down and saw dozens of white flecks on the water. What were they? Icebergs? Fishing boats? Beluga whales? Whitecaps? They tended to be long and narrow, which favors whales or fishing boats. I imagine icebergs would be more irregular in shape. They were oriented every which way, not parallel to each other, as I would expect if they were whitecaps. Wouldn't whitecaps lie along the crest of a wave, and therefore run perpendicular to the prevailing wind? They seemed stable—they didn't form and disappear like clouds—and had no discernable motion. I couldn't judge how big they were—there was nothing to compare them to. I'm still wondering what they were. Mountains tend to look flatter than I expect when viewed from above. Twice I have been fooled this way: Once when flying over the Appalachians, from Chicago to Newark, and once when flying over the Rockies from San Diego to Denver. Both times I looked down and thought, "These must be the foothills. I wonder when we'll come to the REAL mountains?" Then the land flattened out again, and I realized those must have BEEN the real mountains. |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: The Fooles Troupe Date: 19 Feb 07 - 06:53 PM If the window was baffled, you would see nothing. |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: Liz the Squeak Date: 19 Feb 07 - 07:03 PM Like Katlaughing, seeing the circular rainbows that form on the clouds, with the eye of the sun in the centre... stunning! My first flight was 27hrs in the air, London to Auckland, NZ, via Baltimore, L.A. and Tahiti. Didn't see much over the US because it was night and they made us keep the window blinds down so people could see the film. However, we chased the dawn across the skies coming in to Tahiti and landed on what can only be described as a pier. To land, we had to bank quite steeply around the island, which was nerve-wracking. One window full of big green mountain and the other full of bright blue sky... then we came into land and there was a sea horizon visible on each side! My favourite ever sight though, seeing that golden orange rim around the world as the rest of the sky soars up into the deepest indigo and violet. No wonder man has always had a fascination with flight. LTS |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: bobad Date: 19 Feb 07 - 07:04 PM Not baffling but quite spectacular; on my first ever airplane flight, from Montreal to Miami, I got to see the space shuttle as it was ascending, great tongues of flame shooting from the boosters, just off our starboard side. |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: Ebbie Date: 19 Feb 07 - 07:27 PM The first flight to Anchorage Alaska was in the early morning. As the sun came up it spread a golden toasty sheen over the white topped mountains below us. Looked like oven-toasted meringue. |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: Jim Dixon Date: 19 Feb 07 - 07:27 PM I suppose it was many years ago, but I had an "aha" moment when I realized that clouds ALWAYS look white when viewed from above, or when viewed from a horizontal distance. Storm clouds only look black when you're underneath them. |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: SINSULL Date: 19 Feb 07 - 07:42 PM On the way into Lhasa we flew through between the peaks of the Himalayas. Scary as all get out and magnificent. |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: Alba Date: 19 Feb 07 - 07:59 PM Wow Sinsull that sounds awesome! For me it was my very first trip over to Boston from Galway made in early October. I looked out the window after being told we were now over the East Coast and all I could see was, what looked like, a carpet, a beautifully spun carpet of Red, Yellow, Gold and Orange. It took me a minute then I realized I was looking at Trees, Trees of all things, punctuated by White Church steeples...it was so very lovely. My first glimpse of a New England 'Fall' from the air! Those colors still leave me in awe come Fall only I see them from the ground up now..8>) Jude |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: Little Hawk Date: 19 Feb 07 - 08:08 PM The most baffling thing I ever saw was this ugly, weird-looking creature that was staring in the window at me from outside on the wing! What a fright! After awhile it went over and hung onto one of the engine nacelles for a bit and seemed to be fooling around with the equipment. Then the engine starting smoking and making loud noises! The plane had to make an emergency descent to 5,000 feet and put down at the nearest airport. I was really bothered about that for years until I got a chance to talk to William Shatner about it. He said quite offhandedly, "Oh, that was just a Gremlin. No big deal. I did a show about one of those one time. Not to worry. They're nasty little devils, but you don't run into them often. I take along a Hustler magazine on every flight now, and if a Gremlin looks in the window I just hold up the centerfold. It knocks him right off the wing, and I go back to drinking my rum and coke." |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: Bert Date: 19 Feb 07 - 08:25 PM I was arriving at Colorado Springs one evening and there was a thunder storm right over the airport. As we came in to land you could see the sunset underneath the storm clouds; it was absolutely fantastic. |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: Helen Date: 19 Feb 07 - 08:35 PM katlaughing, That's the one I was going to mention, except that I also know what the phenomenon is called: the Brocken Bow or the Brocken Spectre. If you Google Brocken Spectre and click on the Images link above the search box you can see some pictures. A lovely older lady who used to come into the reference library where I worked told me about it. It's named after a mountain in Germany where the phenomenon occurs with your shadow at the centre. I saw one from a small plane while flying between Newcastle & Sydney, Oz, which is a spectacular trip. It follows the coastline all the way down and then flys in over Sydney Harbour. One of the best bits is the large Hawkesbury River area halfway between the two cities. It has lots of smaller waterways and the hills are covered in forests, which I guess we all used to take for granted, but having flown over other areas of our state most of what used to be forests look like leather which has been scraped back, bare with brown grasses, and a few scraggly trees here and there. Helen |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: kendall Date: 19 Feb 07 - 10:26 PM I forget which flight it was, but I was looking out the window and saw a stream of something that looked like water streaming out of the starboard engine. I called the flight attendant, she looked and went right to the pilot. Suddenly, it stopped. I don't know what it was, but I do know that engines don't run on water. |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: Bill D Date: 19 Feb 07 - 11:15 PM Flying from Kansas to Wash DC on the evening of the 4th of July.....yep, looking DOWN on fireworks....mostly little ones, and going the wrong way to get the most time, but an amazing sight....little spurts of color out of the ground...then POP... |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: JohnInKansas Date: 19 Feb 07 - 11:33 PM Somebody reported THIS, but I'm not sure I believe it. "looked like water" coming from an engine could have been de-icing fluid. The pilot often has a switch to turn it on/off as needed, intended for when ascending/descending through "icing conditions." In this case it was probably turned on like a turn signal that keeps blinking 10 miles past the intersection. John |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: Little Hawk Date: 20 Feb 07 - 12:45 AM This is one damned ugly gremlin, John! Wowee. Mine wasn't quite that bad. |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: Dave Hanson Date: 20 Feb 07 - 05:15 AM A dog with a yellow brick in it's mouth. eric |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: Keith A of Hertford Date: 20 Feb 07 - 06:02 AM You can sometimes see a brighter area around the shadow of your plane overland. This is caused by lack of shadow of grass, trees etc. |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: Jack Campin Date: 20 Feb 07 - 06:13 AM Brocken Spectres are much more dramatic on a mountain. I saw one once, on a narrow ridge in the Scottish Highlands looking down into a gully filled with cold mist. The sun cast my shadow onto the mist surrounded by concentric circles of rainbows and white light. When I held my arms out, their shadows expanded into sectors of darkness like the wings of an angel. I've never heard of any supernatural beliefs about them, but it's such a strange experience seeing one that there must be some. |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: Helen Date: 20 Feb 07 - 08:15 AM Jack Campin, After looking at the pictures in the Google image search I think that people might have thought it was an angel with a rainbow halo. Helen |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: GUEST, Grimmy Date: 20 Feb 07 - 09:23 AM I remember looking down at all those tiny people far below. They looked just like ants. And then I realised they WERE ants - we hadn't taken off yet. |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: Vixen Date: 20 Feb 07 - 09:37 AM What Jim Dixon said...Reynaud and I saw those when we went to England from Boston in 2005, and we still don't know what they were. Any ideas, anyone??? V |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: Stilly River Sage Date: 20 Feb 07 - 10:06 AM Maybe a search at NOAA might give you some answers? I have a busy morning or I'd take a look for you. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: Alba Date: 20 Feb 07 - 10:10 AM Here's a link to the NOAA May help you get some answers Vixen. Jude |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: Ebbie Date: 20 Feb 07 - 12:15 PM "Storm clouds only look black when you're underneath them." Jim Dixon Nice metaphor, JD. |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: leeneia Date: 20 Feb 07 - 06:33 PM Thanks for the observations. Keep them coming, because I'll be back for more. John, I too have my doubts about that giraffe. They're tall, but they're not that tall. I have unusually sensitive hearing. One day, when I was a newbie to flying, I said to my husband "I don't understand how those people in front of us can stand that hissing." He shot into the air and shouted, "You hear a hissing!?" He summoned a stewardess, who slouched down the aisle chewing her gum. (Did I mention this was a cheap airline?) When we described the hissing, that kid was simply galvanized. She got the engineer. Turns out our window was in danger of coming out, and the hissing was the air jetting through the seal. We had to change seats, we landed, and we all got put on a different plane. But don't let that distract you from thinking of baffling things you saw in the United States from an airplane. |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: The Fooles Troupe Date: 20 Feb 07 - 07:28 PM "A dog with a yellow brick in it's mouth." ROFL |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: Bunnahabhain Date: 20 Feb 07 - 07:55 PM Studying Geology takes much of the fun out of this, as it severely reduces the number of things you don't recognise. |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: katlaughing Date: 20 Feb 07 - 08:17 PM Thanks for info, Helen. |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: GUEST Date: 20 Feb 07 - 10:43 PM I flew to the northeast (and back) through Denver in early January. I hadn't flown that route before, I don't think, usually I've taken airlines that travel further south. On the flight back, the air was clear and the ground was snow-covered, and since most of my flights in the past 20 years have been in the summer, it was an entirely different experience looking down. The snow really highlighted the texture of the landscape. The one feature it took me a long time to figure out (especially since I was forgetting that this route was further north than my usual routes) were the sandhills of Nebraska. Very, very strange. ~ Becky in Tucson |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: Donuel Date: 21 Feb 07 - 09:30 AM Perfect green circles stretching to the horizon in Kansas. They irrigate with pipes on tires that revolve. |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: Dazbo Date: 21 Feb 07 - 09:49 AM Donuel, yes, I'd forgotten those circles but vividly remember the roads that seem to go on for ever in dead straigh lines. Flying from Stansted to Ancona and flying over the straits of Dover and realising just how close England and France are (I of course know it is 21 miles give or take but from 30,000ft it didn't seem much at all) Flying into Colorado Springs wondering where the mountains were and the plane suddenly banked to land and, almost like a magician's trick, the Rockies appeared out of nowhere. Coming in to land at Washington National and the heart-stopping realisation that the plane wasn't actually moving and we were above the river (obviously we were still moving but it didn't seem like it). |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: leeneia Date: 21 Feb 07 - 10:13 AM Thanks for the additional ideas. Dazbo, one of my favorite memories is approacing Denver from the south and viewing the Front Range down its length. Such power was involved in the making of that huge, knife-edge mass. I've yet to find an explanation for it. Becky, I'm off to Google Earth to look at the sandhills of Nebraska. (In a few weeks I'll be going to Nebraska to see the sandhill cranes. It's a wonderful sight.) |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: Homeless Date: 21 Feb 07 - 03:37 PM Flying over Lake Michigan into Chicago in the winter it looked like someone had dropped a ream of copy paper in the lake, and the water was flat - just hundreds of equal sized white rectangles on a waveless surface. When we reached the shoreline and I saw that each "piece of paper" was larger than two houses put together I realized the lake looked smooth because the waves had been too small to see. I still don't know what the "paper" was. Ice? Why would it have all been so regular in shape and size? |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: KB in Iowa Date: 21 Feb 07 - 04:11 PM I find it fascinating, from above, how much some clouds look like sand ripples in a stream. |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: Donuel Date: 21 Feb 07 - 05:12 PM There is a website for pilots that post their personal pictures of the sky featuring unusual contrails, other air traffic and super cloud formations. Their photos are really nice since the cockpit windows allow for some great scenes. |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: GUEST,MarkS Date: 21 Feb 07 - 07:05 PM In 1969, on the return trip from Vietnam, the pilot came on and annunced that everybody should look out the left hand windows on the airplane. "The land you see there is the State of Washington." You could have heard a pin drop on that plane. |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: Stilly River Sage Date: 21 Feb 07 - 09:08 PM Thanks, Jude. I was flying through when I posted that. Do you have a name for that site, Don? Sounds interesting. I always enjoy the flights when the pilot takes the time to describe what it is that people are seeing out of the plane windows. SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: leeneia Date: 21 Feb 07 - 11:26 PM Thanks. Homeless, I'm sure the things that looked like copy paper on Lake Michigan were sheets of ice. I suppose that the amount of each fragment which sticks out of the water is determined by their buoyance. Therefore, each piece has the same amount of ice sticking out. And all the pieces have been "massaged" by waves of the same size, which would tend to neaten the pile. A photograph of that would definitely be an intriguing sight. Thanks! I remember a train ride where we crossed the Mississippi on a bitterly cold day (-25 F). The ice sheets had been neatly arranged, pointed ends up,and densely packed. We were sharing a table with a little girl from California, and she exclaimed "Frozen waves! Neat!" |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: Liz the Squeak Date: 22 Feb 07 - 03:23 AM Alas, here in the south of the UK we don't have such large bodies of water that freeze - I'm fascinated by the shapes that icefloes and clouds form - isn't it amazing how our brains automatically see things in them, we can never just look at a cloud, it has to look like a dog, a dolphin, a mad axe murderer or our Uncle Joe... Even today, when the south east UK is covered by continuous cloud, I see a great grey duvet spread over us, with little frills of darker grey at the edges. LTS |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: Wordsmith Date: 22 Feb 07 - 04:21 AM So far, the majority have been cool or nice sights, I can never forget flying out West(US) and seeing the results of strip mining...barren land where nothing grows now...looked like rings and rings of dead rock...a ghost mountain...and all I could see was greed. |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: leeneia Date: 22 Feb 07 - 09:54 AM It's bad, but nonetheless yours is a good suggestion, Wordsmith. Strip mining seen from the air would mystify some people and would be worthy of explanation. Thanks |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: Stilly River Sage Date: 22 Feb 07 - 11:35 AM I love flying over the desert southwest and looking at all of the cinder cones and lava floes. Monster blood in Navajo legend. |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: leeneia Date: 23 Feb 07 - 10:20 AM I know what you mean, SRS. I plan to use volcanoes near Phoenix (due south of Stanfield) in my project. There's also a grand flow near Grants, New Mexico. There's lots of basalt right in Phoenix, but it's weathered to a pinkish-tan color and lacks the drama. At least, that's how it looks in photographs. There is a program called Google Earth that shows features like this. I don't know how detailed the free program gets, but it's worth looking into. |
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Subject: RE: BS: airplane window. baffled. please help From: Bunnahabhain Date: 23 Feb 07 - 01:07 PM Even the free programme (Google Earth) is an amazing It's very unlikely to be basalt if it's weathered to a pinkish tan colour. They tend to be dark in both intrusive and extrusive forms, and stay that way. A granite, or related silica rich rock is far more probable |
