Page 8 - Cloud Tops News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

As searchers continue to search over the java sea. simply put airplanes want to fly. it is very very hard to make them not fly. and whether it's a technical malfunction, human error or bad weather, it usually takes more than a single factor to actually bring an aircraft down. that said the weather in front of airasia 8501 was daunting and potentially dangerous even if it only triggered a chain of other events that may have doomed the airliner. tom, take us through what we know about the weather at the time the plane disappeared. >> anderson it's been an interesting 24 hours. of course spending...

Has been quite tumultuous in the region, in fact it's monsoon season. as our meteorologist janice dean has been pointing out all day here. looking at the satellite behind you really does paint a grim picture when you're talking about air travel? >> julie that was the satellite imagery we received at the time where we lost the flight or lost contact with the flight, and you can see the cloud tops here, so this is infrared satellite imagery, meaning that we look at the cloud tops and the shades that you see and the deeper shades of red, meaning the cooler cloud tops the higher cloud tops and the...

About gindzing ingfinding a black box right now. >> we say all this as a matter of speculation. for all we know the mane may not have crashed at this point. >> that's true. >> we will find out in the hours and days to come. oliver mcgee thank you very much. now more on the condition that could have contributed to the plane's disappearance. >> this is the monsoon season in this area of the world meaning that winds have shifted and they typically see their heaviest rain, thunderstorms and strong winds across this region this time of year. of course the data that we have seen is that there were...

Mark? >> good afternoon, richard. we continue to follow the weather situation surrounding that air asia flight 8501. on the screen now is the flight path through the java are sea from indonesia up toward singapore was the planned path. it does appear the weather played a big role in what happened with this flight. the colors you see on the screen. this is our enhanced infrared imagery. looking down on the earth at the clouds, the brighter thor colors, yellows and reds indicating the higher cloud tops and the colderer cloud tops. some of the storms were quickly blossoming to over 50,000 feet. o...

It's lighting up the higher cloud tops. we know these are higher. that does not occur where the last position is. it's reasonable to assume thunderstorms will be in the region. it's been a terrible month. but these thunderstorms are much smaller in size. we have a small island here. you were asking about 0 to 5 feet it was considered calm. vessels are in the area. we're under two hours for that. >> thank you very much for that update.