I am an aeronautical engineer. I worked for 40 years at the Boeing Company in Seattle. I live under the approach/departure corridor to Sea-Tac International Airport and have observed contrails since I was 5 years old. You are talking through your hat. Contrails can persist and stretch entirely across the sky. It is no big deal. I look at the sky a LOT. When I lived in California, I realized that half the natural scenery I was used to was clouds in the sky...but there were few clouds. And when any clouds showed up, the locals acted like it was a plague.

You obviously don't live where there are clouds. Even today, the sky was almost entirely covered by thick cumulus clouds (we had some snow, in fact)...and in the clear patch, I could see a contrail. To think that contrails are some kind of environmental threat is a fantasy. Contrails are only clouds. If you are peeved at the absence of clouds, why not welcome contrails? You are imagining things that aren't real. Your weather pattern might have changed, but---guess what? Don't feel alone. This is called natural variation. Everybody gets upset with California droughts...but they don't stop to realize that drought is California's natural condition for tens of thousands of years. The Pacific Northwest is rainy and has been all my life. Rain requires clouds, and we got 'em.