Rocket launch or contrail offshore: Answer, contrail
The above article and opinion is from a Weather Examiner.
We also have a short video taken by Blaine Reiger in the report below.
Mystery deepens with video of ‘launch’ off O.C.
The opinion there was that we do not know what it was. By a Science Editor for the OC Register. So we apparently have seen these events twice in the past year, at least. And apparently this issue remained unresolved back in January and it did not get national attention back then. No conclusive proof that it was NOT a missile back on December 31st. Only speculation. And that does appear to be Catalina Island.
What I glean from your post is that if this is actually a rocket, it is almost certainly not the first time.
With all the air and boat traffic out there, I cannot imagine that this could be a missile. Heck, the “flight 800 missile” had hundreds of witnesses and it is STILL accepted that there was no missile. Here we have, really, NO witnesses. Just a video that looks a LOT like many airplane contrails I have seen, and NOBODY that would have been much closer saying anything whatsoever.
The5re is nowhere near enough evidence yet to remotely compel me to even consider that this is a missile.
Again, I thought it was a missile - until I saw the video. And that stupid video is edited in such a way as to confuse, not clarify.