Intro, and an interesting article

[Guest gaulois]

Hi Everyone. I have been searching the net for a good flight/pilot page and forum. This is the best I found. I am not a pilot, but I have flown a great deal on both commercial and private prop planes. I love flying because of my fascination with weather, among other things. What better means to experience weather phenomena!

 

Having said that, unfortunately it seems that AF477 was a victim, if you will, of a very intense cell associated with a westward moving tropical wave in the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). I am very familiar with the ITCZ because I study the spawning of what are called the Cape Verde Hurricanes. These are hurricanes that are spawned in the Central Atlantic usually in late summer/early fall from waves coming off the African coast, just to the north of the ITCZ. One day I hope to visit areas within the ITCZ, most likely Panama. In this article, the most interesting content is the IR Satellite Imagery of the ITCZ as the AF477. There are several images that are very interesting. The cell or large Cum/Nimb storms have cloud tops in excess of 60,000 feet. In fact it is sort of rare to see the white ridge, which indicates extremely high and cold cloud tops. This looks literally like a mountain ridge of high CT/CBs. If the pilots flew through this..... I would not want to be on that plane.

 

Below you will see the link to the article I refered to- the recent AF447 Crash. Give it time to load because of all the images. It is a treasure trove of information regarding weather and the flight.

 

Thanks everyone

 

Daniel

 

AVHerald article:

 

Crash: Air France A332 over Atlantic on June 1st 2009, aircraft impacted ocean

 

 

[Tomo]

G'day Mate, Welcome aboard!

 

Yep, the weather is a big thing in aviation alright, "It all depends on the weather, whether we go flying or not!"

 

Have Fun!:thumb_up: