Thoughts of grace and beauty were not on my mind as I taxied through a cold drizzle for takeoff from Elmira. My departure had been delayed for an hour and a half by Air Traffic Control because of arrival delays at Newark, not surprising considering that a dreary sky in the New York area had turned foggy with nightfall. I was apprehensive about an approach to near- minimum conditions and also worried about the airplane icing up in the clouds en route.
The usual combination of lucky guesses and fortuitous circumstance prevailed on my trip, and icing was not a serious problem, especially on the segment near Wilkes- Barre where I was barely above the clouds. The cloud tops were irregular and the light of a half moon was sufficient to allow me to detour around the lumpy billows that rose above my altitude. The ghost mountains of cloud were beautiful in the half light, but the best show was yet to come.
As I traveled across northern Jersey, towards the coast, the clouds changed. I emerged into a vast cavern in the sky, with a solid layer of cloud above me, obscuring the stars, and a solid layer of cloud below me, obscuring the lights of the ground. The cavern was dimly illuminated with a diffuse brownish light from the civilization below, but the only sign of life was the lights of all the airliners that were silently maneuvering in line for their landing approaches.
Coming closer to Newark, and my turn to descend through the murk, fingers of clear air had started to streak through the fog below me. There were patches of bright lights and patches of fuzzy lights amid the lighter and darker layers of fog. One large suspension bridge was framed in a hole in the fog, its two strings of white lights mimicking the holiday decorations. I was awe- struck by the unworldly view of familiar scenery. It was so beautiful that I forgot my apprehension about my own approach.
I felt at home, and like most things that are familiar and relaxing, the approach worked nicely, with the runway appearing a mile or so ahead and 400 feet below me. After landing, I taxied back parallel to the runway, facing the incoming airplanes. I watched as the low clouds would gradually show a bright spot which would grow until it exploded into a set of landing lights. The lights would then spear their way through the few renegade clouds that floated in the slender band of sky between the runway and the ceiling. As each plane touched the runway, the next plane was just making its bright spot in the distance.
It was a stupendous night for plane watching. The wind was calm and the temperature an almost balmy 50 degrees. Planes are fascinating to watch on any night, but on this night they were landing through air that was saturated with moisture. The air in the first few hundred feet above the ground was clear but fragile, the moisture was poised to condense into cloud with the slightest drop in air pressure.
Airplanes fly by virtue of the low pressure area that is developed on the top side of the wings, and as the planes drifted down to the runway, their wings were shrouded in cloud. The moisture would condense into cloud as it passed over the wing, and then evaporate as soon as the wing had passed. It looked like the plane was carrying the cloud, but actually it was a cloud that was continually generating and dissipating with the passage of the wing.
It was easy to see that the air was not evenly mixed. As each plane floated in, the intensity of its wing cloud would wax and wane according to the moisture content of the air around it at that instant. Planes that were working the air harder to maintain lift made larger clouds. Sometimes an air pocket would be so fragile that the plane's passage would cause a cloud to form and stay in place in the calm air, only to be speared by the next plane in line.
The wing clouds are like spirits, generally appearing and disappearing in the wink of an eye, and lingering only on special occasions. Vortex clouds, the streamers that sometimes trail from the wingtips, represent the continuing disturbance created by the airplane's passage, and can linger for many seconds. They represent the low pressure core of the horizontal tornadoes that form when the high pressure air below the wing makes an end run around the wingtip to mix with the low pressure air above the wing.
On this night when the wing clouds formed continuously and sometimes lingered, the vortex streamers laid in the sky for almost a minute, writhing twisting and undulating in the still air. Viewed from below, they were gray, but viewed in silhouette against the distant lights just above the runway, they were black.
It was art, it was science. It was technology and it was nature. I sat next to my plane and watched the show for half an hour. To me, it was a peaceful and pleasant evening. I thought the weather to be balmy, but I also thought of a "balmy" great-aunt, who rocked in her chair serenely oblivious that her mind had left her. I wondered if it was the evening or if it was just me.