Air France Flight 447

[Mike Birbeck]

Tim Vasquez has produced an excellent interpolation of the missing Air France flight and weather conditions en route plotted against known reporting points on the night of this terrible disaster. He points to some significant convective cells.

This link is now doing the rounds on Pro Pilot forums.

Air France 447 - AFR447 - A detailed meteorological analysis - Satellite and weather data

http://www.weathergraphics.com/tim/af447/

 

[Darren Addy]

Server is not keeping up.

Q: Who hosts weathergraphics.com?
A: Dreamhost

 

[Greg McLaughlin]

I actually first heard about this analysis Tim did on the Rush Limbaugh show today. He even mentioned Tim Vasquez as the author of this analysis and gave the link to the listeners. This is a very informative analysis. Its interesting to me that the plane gave its final transmission when it had nearly exited the complex of storms.

 

[Tim Vasquez]

Yeah, Weathergraphics.com is on shared hosting and I've seen a few hiccups earlier in the afternoon but it seems to be holding up and pages are loading for me ok. If it gets any worse I'll move it to a private server right away.

The study started out as just a pet project to see what I could uncover from the observational data. It's interesting that it's gotten to be a big story already. I will say a lot of it wouldn't have been possible without McIDAS and GINI.

Tim

 

[Warren Faidley]

Extremely impressive report. After learning to fly in Arizona during the monsoon, with a military (private) instructor, I developed a deep respect for any type of updraft cloud -- especially in small aircraft. I am a little surprised that the pilot relayed no initial turbulence, or possibly a sig. lgt. "discharge" comment to ground control which is common practice in commercial aviation. This, along with the other data makes me think something happened suddenly, like complete structural failure/decompression.

Warren