Wow. That picture sure does show the corkscrew pattern of an exhaust plume, made easily visible by its time-amplified residual spread. Wouldn’t it be that in the case of a contrail, the pattern and time-effected spread would remain more linear—as the trails of the engines would turn in on themselves at least? It seems the only way you’d get a distinct and exaggerated vortex type of spread, if it was jet engine induced, would be if some sort of magical horizontal funnel cloud were to hit the residual. On that picture a corkscrew—its natural time-spread pattern—looks pretty obvious.
Thats an exhaust plume from solid rocket booster.
Most likely it was one of ours and a test of some new technology that the military wanted to test out with no advanced notice to those who potentially could be very interested in observing the test in detail.
That’s one of the little details that impressed me, the little corkscrew movement that one might expect from a missile making a course adjustment.
Also, as I understand it, for a jet to leave a contrail, it has to be at a pretty high altitude. It won’t have one below a certain height, and as others have noted, the breadth of the lower part of the trail seems too wide to be from a jet approaching from as far away as the horizon, which does reinforce the idea that it is vertical lift.
Can’t help but wonder, if they’re trying to use that USAir flight as an explanation because of its proximity, maybe that flight isn’t the explanation for the plume, but was an intended target a la TWA 800, only the aim was off this time.
That would be vastly incorrect. You would expect a "corkscrew" pattern from jet engine exhaust as the contrail interacts with the wingtip vortices generated by the wings.
Below is a seriously cool picture, showing the phenomenon in an interesting way:
Now just imagine a continuous stream of condensation being acted upon that way.... and there's your corkscrew.
Yes, the corkscrew pattern is very distinctive and easily seen.
But I just read that we are Bigfoot video believers if we see and say so.