Plane May Have Gone Down in 9000 ft to 15,000 ft depth of water.

The search and rescue operation is under way around the Brazilian island ofFernando de Noronha. That island lies just offshore of Brazil's easternmostpoint. The ocean depth north and east of that island runs 9000 feet to 15,000feet. Water temperatures in that area are in the upper 70s and low 80s.As the search continues for the missing Air France A330 airplane,speculation centers around a possible lightning strike and electrical problemsas reported by Air France. The area where they are searching for the plane hadnumerous heavy thunderstorms Sunday evening. This is an area called theIntertropical Convergence Zone or ITCZ. Storms were probably towering to aheight over 40,000 feet and given the breadth of the storms on the satelliteimages, it was probably tough for the pilots to avoid the storms.

Normally, a commercial plane flies at 30,000 to 35,000 feet, which wouldmean any storm towering over 40,000 feet the airplane would either fly throughthe storm or around the storm. Tropical thunderstorms and the lightninggenerated in a tropical thunderstorm is different from that of storms over theU.S. Studies have shown that the top region of the tropical thunderstorms arehighly charged and more conducive to lightning. Thus an airplane flying nearthe top of a tropical thunderstorm could be more susceptible to a lightningstrike.

The Air France Airbus A330-200 plane carrying 228 people vanished off theradar screen early this morning. The plane was traveling from Rio de Janeiro toParis. The plane left Rio de Janeiro at 6 p.m. EDT Sunday with an anticipatedarrival time in Paris at 5:15 a.m. Contact with the plane was lost at 10:20p.m. Sunday.