Page 39 - Thunderstorm Activity News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Investigation, the weather conditions at the time that plane went missing early sunday morning. the airline says the pilots requested a change from the planned route to go around the thunderstorms and the torrential rains hitting the region. meteorologist maria molina is live in the fox extreme weather center with more on that. >> reporter: hi, trace. some of the storms that occur near the equator, it's classified as the intertropical conversion zone, so we tend to see a lot of thunderstorm activity near will equator, and that's exactly where they were flying through and some very powerful thu...

Viewers, just because there is a tropical climate it doesn't eliminate the formation of ice at -- >> you won't see the icing you would typically see in the latitudes that we live in, doug. so i don't know -- we'll have to get an i have yags expert that flies in this region. i don't think icing is going to be that huge of concern because this is the tropical area. this is very warm. we could see very small hail but i don't think the icing conditions that you typically see within north america are something that we should really hone in on. but again, this is the tropics here. very very warm con...

This region is susceptible to thunderstorm development. it's all because of the dynamics that occur across this region. the northeast monsoon encountering land mass and various other aspects creating the thunderstorm activity. remember, natalie, that turbulence can form from all kinds of factors, that being wind, thunderstorms, flying directly through a jet stream or flying very close to a mountainous region. and this area is indeed very, very mountainous. so we've had all those factors in place. so weather is certainly a formidable threat across this region. >> yes, it is now as well. all rig...

>> that has been confirmed. everything is so speculative at this point, but there's no doubt in my mind, and meteorologists following this story very closely, that airplane encountered some significant thunderstorm activity as it took off from the surabaya area. this is the latest satellite imagery that was just around the time that the last contact was made with the airport traffic control. you can see some of the thunderstorm activity across the java sea that flared up within the hour of the last point of contact which is roughly about 7:24 local time. this would give rise to that turbulence...

Us. the search has been called off due to night. it's monsoon season in the area. for safety sake you call that off. how does that impact the search and rescue effort? >> it's all about time alex. the longer the time spreads, of course, the wreckage is going to be moving. with the sea state under this thunderstorm activity the waves are going to start to spread the wreckage. what is going to be very difficult is once they start to find floating debris they are going to have to try to backtrack where the debris came from so they can find the main impact point and the main debris field. hopefull...