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Community photo entitled  by Joel Kolbo on 02/26/2025 at Just North of Woodinville, WA

On 02/26/2025 12:15 pm by Joel Kolbo | Just North of Woodinville, WA

I live 20-30 miles North of the Sea-Tac Airport, where commercial jets often come in above the house at about a mile up, going West on their base leg of an approach. They are descending quietly, and I don't pay much attention to them. This day, I looked up, and saw the hole-punch cloud and didn't know what to make of it. It did not dawn on me that a jet could trigger precipitation from that layer of frozen ice particles. So, I am assuming, then, that the wisp is the concentrated "fallout" of water crystals from that cloud layer. Had to look it up to understand, but it makes sense now. The turbulence cause by the jet caused them to collide, stick, and become too heavy to stay suspended any longer (aka: precipitate). Neat! I was SO confused seeing it and not knowing the cause. LOL! Note the bird flying in the frame of the picture. I believe it is a Bald Eagle. Pretty common out here in the PNW. It was on a long glide after thermalling up high, probably headed toward the Snohomish River about 3 miles away. The bird was maybe a thousand feet up. (I flew hang gliders over 30 years, so got fairly good at altitude and distance guessing)

Taken using an old Android S6 phone.

Uh-oh. It was on a Google Photos page I share with family, so I took a screen-shot on my home computer, and saved it to Paint. The bird is all pixelated like a 1980s space panic video game, so I will try to send a second image with the bird shown larger.