Why all the planes?

Question

I live on the coast of Massachusetts not far from the New Hampshire border. Today was a very clear day with blue skies and no clouds. I saw the strangest thing around 3:00Pm. The sky had all these vapor trails and I started watching the sky. In 15 minutes 24 planes leaving vapor trails flew by. The trails lasted a long time. More planes flew by and, although not accurate, I think there were about 40 or more int the hour that I watched. The sky in the Southern section became hazy and streaked with haze and vapor trails. I've never seen such a thing before. The planes seemed to come from the northeast and fly towards the southwest. I only noticed 2 planes heading from south to north. All of the planes left trails Eventually some of the trails looked like clouds but they weren't clouds.
Does anyone know what was going on?

Answer 1

Atmospheric conditions above 25,000 feet changed around 3PM.

I have no doubt that the same number of planes per hour were flying overhead before 3PM, it's just that the atmospheric conditions didn't allow for large vapor trails. After 3, a weather front blew in, or the jet-stream changed slightly, so vapor trails could form,

It's a simple, very logical explanation.


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Answer 2

To ad to tlbs101's answer, the contrails you saw are definitely the ice crystallization of jet exhaust. Nothing more, nothing less. As for the direction of the planes, the NE to SW route over your head is the link between the areas of NY, Philly and DC to Europe. The planes actually fly over the polar regions above Greenland and Iceland instead of across the southern Atlantic because they will always take the shortest route. This does not make much sense if you look at a flat map, but if you look at a globe, you will understand. From New York, the shortest distance to London is not East, but NE.