Edinburgh news: Why you may have seen strange patterns in the skies above East Lothian today

Strange patterns appeared over the sky in East Lothian at around 8am on Wednesday, January 16. A local woman, Olive Dignla, successfully snapped the bizarre contrails over Haddington. She shared the pictures online, asking fellow residents: “Strange sighting in the sky just now. Anyone know what this is?”

Responding to the query, some suggested that extraterrestrial activity could be the cause. One wrote: “That’s certainly not a plane”, while another suggested that it could be ‘a UFO’.

However, others had more rational explanations for the sighting. “It’s an aeroplane. Big contrails”, wrote one local, while another claimed the patterns looked like they’d been made by “a rocket”. One Edinburgh local who spotted the contrails wrote: “Looks like a plane that was struggling”.

According to flight tracking website Freedar, the trails may have been made by an Atlas Air Boeing 747-400 jet, which flew over East Lothian and Edinburgh this morning.