[Yo-Yo]

It was a contrail. Here's a contrail from the same part of California on New Year's Eve 2009:

Here's another similar contrail from Michigan:

Many more examples at Contrailscience.com.

[jimbo123]

Contrailscience.com (Anonymous Blog)

[Gargantua]

Note how the sun is illuminating the underside of these jet contrails you have posted; just as I said it would had this other item been a jet. Also, these are contrails of jets shortly after takeoff.

The explanation we are receiving is that this is a jet coming back from Japan or from across the Pacific. In other words, it would have been a continuously dminishing-toward-the-horizon con-trail.

None of which alters the lighting discrepancy. There is no way that the recent footage is that of a jet returning from across the pacific. If it were, the sun would have been lighting up the underside of the con-trail, not along its right-hand-edge.

Period. Nice try, but your imagination has outstripped your powers of observation.

;-\

[RobRoy]

Oh crap! They launched one in Michigan too?! How the he!! did the Chicoms get a sub into the great lakes?!

[dragnet2]

Man, those are beautiful Southern California sunsets!

[dragnet2]

We see sunsets like this all the time in Southern California...I've got one image taken a few months ago, that is just spectacular.

[editor-surveyor]

Sorry, no comparison!

No similarity at all.