This as indonesian authorities focus on pin pointing the exact location of airasia flight 8501 officials confirming sonar imagery located wreckage believed to be if the aircraft submerged at the bottom of the java sea. Whats going to be of particular interest is what part of the airplane are there, the wings, the tail just to sort of try to understand whether the plane broke up in flight or remained intact. Other reports suggest the plane may be lying upsidedown according to the wall street journal. On tuesday Recovery Team brings in pieces of debris along with the remains of seven victims. A gruesome task recovering more bodies and identifying them. But some still hold on to hope one woman with six family members aboard tells cnn, theres nothing confirmed with what happened to the passengers and we are still hoping there is a miracle. At the Crisis Center in surabaya surabaya relatives gather for a Prayer Service inside the airport. Next the hunt for clues, answers as to what brought down airasia flight 8501. Like that contained in the flights data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder. Im hoping by first thing next week were going to have a very clear picture of what happened to this airplane. Because the industry absolutely needs to know. Urgently what went wrong. The ceo of airasia has become a familiar presence on television over the last few days. He spoke just a few minutes ago. Search and rescue team is doing a fantastic job. Theyre narrowing the search. Theyre feeling a bit more comfortable that theyre beginning to know where it is. But they have theres no confirmation no sonar, nothing. Some visual identification. You heard what he said about the sonar, we have talked to people in charge of this Search Mission and they have told us while its not definite they do believe that the sonar from the airplane has identified the plane as being on the bottom in about 100 feet of water in the java sea. We just found out minutes ago, michaela and christine, an additional five bodies will go through the same ceremony we saw two hours ago, about one hour from now. So tonight, seven bodies will be brought back to this airport where they start to say goodbye. So many people going away for new years now theyre coming back here tonight. Seven families will begin the process of mourning. 155 families still waiting until the remains of their loved ones are brought back. The search efforts have been hampered because of the weather in the search area. Its continuing to deteriorate. Were told its going to be bad for the next two or three days. Lets take a look at the system thats moving through there. Meteorologist chad myers joins us. We know this is kind of an intense weather area to begin with. Especially this time of year. Take a look at the map behind me. Take a look at the red areas, these are tops of thunderstorms, 45,000 to 55,000 feet tall. The search area is right here. This is the map of about 6 00 a. M. Local time. When they wanted to do the search. Heres the problem with this area the weather is bad in the morning when you want to send the crews out and it gets good at night when the sun goes down. You can see gary it didnt look like the wind was blowing. For a while today the wind was blowing 3540. Theres not even any rain showers in the search area tomorrow morning, bam, were back here where we were yesterday. We have showers and thunderstorms everywhere tomorrow night, the showers are gone. The next morning, friday morning, theyre back again right over the search area intense and then by the afternoon theyre gone. So as soon as you lose the light in the area then you lose the bad weather and thats not what you want. You want it to go the other way with the more ideal. But with four inches of rainfall just in the next couple of days here and this is a devastating map here. These are windspeeds of 50 Miles Per Hour right over the search area. Were going to get waves of 25 feet there. Michaela back to you. Chad of course theres urgency to get the remains of the other passengers out. But at the same time they dont want to risk the lives of search and rescuers at all. Well check back with you. For more were joins by a cnn aviation analyst and former Inspector General of the ntsb and mary ski i have ao and david soucie has a new book coming out Malaysian Airlines flight 370 why it disappeared and why its only a matter of time before it happens again. I think we have to talk about the overnight developments. First were told that the sonar has detected the wreckage of the plane on the bottom of the sea floor on the java sea and backing off, saying thats not confirmed. What does that say to you . Tony fernandez is not the kind of man who is going to take something on its surface value. Until he has proof that yes that is that aircraft hes not going to say yes it is the aircraft. So thats why i think were seeing here they dont want to make mistakes like 370 where they said this is conclusively this is what happened and then come back later and say well no we were wrong. Thats why right now you dont see the screaming and the crying you see the acceptance thats going on with the families because of the fact theres not been any misinformation. Misinformation lack of transparency mary one of the thing we heard complaints of with mh370, this time theyre trying to be as transparent as possible. Trying to make sure that most information is released. But also factually. So lets talk about this development. What do you anticipate if the sonar has spotted something . Given what weve seen in terms of the debris field. The deceased that have been found in the ocean. Do you anticipate were going to see a whole fuselage . Do you anticipate the plane will have broken up . I think the plane will have broken up. From the altitude at which it was flying literally any altitude over a few thousand feet, a plane hitting water is comparable to a plane hitting cement. So i think most likely we will see it broken up. There will be large pieces but we know it has broken up because of the bodies that have already been found. They had to get out of the fuselage one way or another. And they got out by being broken up. There may be some pretty large pieces and what would be very helpful for everyone the searchers, the families of course the air investigators would be if that tail part of the fuselage is still intact and the black boxes are still there on the ocean floor, then they dont even need to go listening for pings, they go in and get the black boxes without disturbing the recovery of the body process. Mary, speaking of the bodies we understand some of the bodies that were recovered, the deceased that were recovered, some were unclothed. One was wearing a Flight Attendants uniform. Help us understand what that tells investigators when youve done these investigations. Well you know the clothed and not clothed is kind of interesting. In some accidents the victims are clothed. Other than tearing away depending on the forces and others theyre unclothed. The unclothed ones ill give an example of a crash that was long ago. And that was the shootdown of iran air and the plane broke up in the air at altitude. And the victims were largely unclothed. The fall and the forces on the body falling from the air actually ripped the clothing off. In other accidents its a mix, because some who are ejected from the plane upon impact the clothes are ripped away and then others who surface later, theyre intact. Can you tell a little bit about the clothing. Its certainly not conclusive. But it does help searchers have an idea if the plane will be intact in large pieces or small pieces et cetera. Its just one of the many pieces of information theyll look at. Another piece of information on the side of investigators for search and rescue areas of the java sea only about 100 feet deep. I imagine that the hope is that parts of the plane will be intact. It will help with the investigation. And in fact wasnt air france there was a good portion of the plane resting on the bottom. You have to be very careful on how thats brought up. Do you bring it up right away . How does that you dont necessarily. The only thing you do in the investigation, you only thing you do is in the purpose of finding out what happened once you find out what happened theres really not a lot of benefit in doing anything more. Youre taking resources away from the investigation of and the purpose of the investigation. So at this point, and with air france 447 as well. The focus is on getting the bodies back. To the loved ones, they really need to do that. Closurewise theres also a lot of evidence as mary said about the clothing theres evidence about what is in lungs, is there salt water in the lungs or are they clear . Those are all clues in this puzzle of riddles that were trying to put together. And most of the clues will come in in the flight data recorders, david soucie mary sciavo really appreciate it. Another developing story breaking overnight in Southern California more than 100 motorists trapped on a highway in heavy snow. Dozens of have been rescued at this hour but there are more still awaiting help. A car accident led to major delays during a winter storm. By the time the accident was cleared, many cars were unable to get out thanks to a foot of new snow. We want to bring in San Bernardino fire chief David Hartwood with the latest on the rescue efforts, good morning, chief, youve had a very busy night. You say 25 people in one group have been rescued. Another 50 people in another group. Were looking at a map and some video of what the conditions are. Tell us how youre getting them out. Yeah so we used on the crestline side lake harrowhead side of one of our mountain ranges we used snow cats. We have a fleet of snow cats for our Mountain Resort communities and we brought them down to lower elevations and we took some stranded motorists on the Lake Arrowhead side to Crestline First Baptist Church where theyll be sheltered overnight. Then on the other side the l. A. County side mount baldy area we took 40 occupants, mount baldy road was closed and impassable. We took them by crew buggy, a vehicle we used to transport our fire crew members up to mount baldy lodge. It gives you new meaning to a ski vacation when you cant get there. Tell me about the condition of the people who youre rescuing. Theyre in good spirits. We had on both sides, we had motorists who were prepared. And decided to stay with their vehicles but as i said a number of them about 40 on the mount baldy side the l. A. County line side have been closer to 50 on the Lake Arrowhead side. Chose to take us up on our offer to transport them to a warm location and some food and coffee and theyll be staying the night there. Happy new year to all of them. Much better than spending the night in your car. What are you advising people trying to drive in the area i know its an arctic snow mass and a lot of wind that have come together to cause the system. What are you telling people who might be on the road . Well we we always tell people here in our mountain communities, especially during the winter to drive prepared. Not only have a full tank of gas, but to have food and clothing warm clothing in your vehicles. This was especially odd for us. This is were used to snow in our communities, mountain communities here especially resort communities, but snow level got all the way down to 1,000 feet here. So really these right above the valley areas our inland empire and San Gabriel Valley areas, received up to 12 inches of snow. It was odd for us. And then most people just went up for a day of skiing roads were good in the morning and then they got caught and illprepared to come back down the hill. Chief mark hartwig, we wish you the best of luck. Glad that so many of them were so prepared. Cnns sarah sidener is on the way to the scene of the rescues. The San Bernardino mountains, east of l. A. Party folk there. Theres a lot going on in the world. We begin in suburban Philadelphia Police shot and killed a man who they say tried to run them over. Police are saying that they were trying to arrest this 52yearold, his name Joseph Anthony puccini, on tuesday for posting online videos threatening to Kill Police Officers as well as fbi agents. His death comes a little more than a week after a man who made similar threats shot and killed two nypd Police Officers and then shot himself. U. S. Law enforcement officials are pushing back hard against sony hack theories suggesting a former employee insider may have been behind the cyberattack. It comes after Cybersecurity Firm norris says testified collected points to an inside job. U. S. Officials say norris only examined a very narrow piece of the hack and say they firmly believe north korea is responsible. House majority whip Steve Scalise is in damage control after admitting he spoke to a White Supremicist group. Cnn is trying to gauge the level he has right now of support. House Speaker John Boehner says he has full confidence in the louisiana congressman. And a new statement scalise says he does regret the mistake and wholeheartedly condemns the views of the group he did speak to. And it is very early here. But it is new years eve in the u. S. As we plea for tonight. In some parts of the world they are ringing in 2015. It is amazing. Look at the beautiful celebration, happy new year new zealand. These pictures from auckland new zealand where revelers brought in the new year just moments ago. A small part of russia will hit the new year at 7 00 a. M. Eastern, followed by eastern australia at 8 00 a. M. Eastern. The countdown to 2015 here in the east just under 18 hours away. Watching the new year ring in. Every hour somewhere. I move all the clocks forward three hours. Youve already done that so the kids think its 9 00. Its hard with cell phones and devices where they can see the realtime. They know whats up. All of my people are on the west coast im going to have to face time with them at 12 00 and face time with them when its their 12 00. A lot going on. Back to the top story, the mystery of what brought down airasia flight 8501. Our experts weighing in on questions you have tweeted us. And objects thought to be from the wreckage of the plane have been spotted on the bottom of the java sea, is it the main fuselage . If not, where does the search go from here . Narrator these are the tennis shoes skater kid whoa narrator that got torture tested by teenagers and cried out for help. From the surprised designers. Who came to the rescue with a brilliant fix male designer i love it narrator which created thousands of new customers for the tennis shoes that got torture tested by teenagers. The internet of everything is changing manufacturing. Is your Network Ready . In my world, wall isnt a street. Return on investment isnt the only return im looking forward to. For some every dollar is earned with sweat, sacrifice, courage. Which is why usaa is honored to help our members with everything from investing for retirement to saving for college. Our commitment to current and former military members and their families is without equal. Start investing with as little as fifty dollars. Sonar equipment may have located objects believed to be from airasia flight 8501 on the bottom of the java sea. Divers need to get there tomorrow. They were hampered this morning by rough weather. There are still many questions about what happened to the flight. I want to go through what we know and dont know at this hour and answer questions youve been sending us over twitter. Cnn aviation analyst les abent contributing editor of flying magazine and jeff weiss author of extreme fear. Investigators are saying sonar hay most likely shown them where it is but the ceo of the company is saying theres no confirmation. They have an idea but theres no confirmation what do you make of that jeff . I think if they had found it. I think if they had sidescan sonar images of portions of the fuselage on the sea bed, there wouldnt be room for ambiguity. It would be clear. The fact that theyre uncertain leads me to tip it to the probably not column. But listen this is still early. We just dont know. The ceo is being very cautious here. And the investigators think they know where it is from what theyve seen but the ceo is being cautious. I would like to think the investigators know what theyre doing, but i agree with jeff there is that possibility. Absolutely. So waiting to clear that up. And theyre not in the water right now, not searches because of the weather. Lets talk about what we know and dont know and how all of this information is going to be so important to investigators, we know that parts of the plane may have been located by sonar at the bottom of the sea. We doesnt know how large the parts are, where they were located or their orientation on the sea floor, theres a lot to discover here. Weve seen this before in other accident investigations information comes out early in the process, its sketchy. Its inconsistent. Its going to take a little bit of time to sort out whats true and whats rumor at this point. We know also gentlemen, that the debris was found a distance from the last known location of the plane. Or what condition its in. We know the debris was found in the ocean, 100 to 200 kilometers from the last location. We dont know if the final resting place of the plane is close to the debris field at this point, do we les . We dont and that is going to make a forensic aspect of the investigation important. You know and how far it drifted. How it impacted the water. I mean this whats happening now is little bits of information are coming in. Enough that now you can develop more theories and more speculation. You put those theories and speculation to rest the data recorders and can you see what the avianics with the mechanics of the plane were telling us, the black boxes are the key to piecing this together. But we dont know where they are or how long it will take to locate them. Especially if were going to have rough weather for the next few days. Absolutely. This does not help to have these huge thunderstorms brewing up. The kind of thunderstorms incidentally that probably was linked to the problem of the plane in the first place is also now making difficulties to recover the wreckage and debris. I should point out, this search is now going pretty