Why Did This Jet Fall From 35,000 FEET?

Okay, so a private jet crashed in Florida yesterday, killing nine people. And when I went back and looked at the weather radar, I noticed something concerning right where the aircraft began to fall out of the sky. Now, I want to be really clear about one thing before we get started here. What actually brought this plane down is for the NTSB to figure out, and that's going to take some time, okay? But the weather that the jet flew into is already sitting right there in the data. The radar, the satellite, the lightning, and the jet's own flight data, second by second, is available right now. So let's go through it in order in the same way same way that I did. This is a Learjet 60 flying from Austin, Texas to the Bahamas on Sunday afternoon. For most of the trip, it's cruising at around 41,000 feet. Then around 1236 near Naples, it starts stepping down. And by 1242, it levels off at 35,000 feet, headed east across South Florida. And on the flight data, it looks like a smooth, steady cruise. For about six minutes straight, the jet holds 35,000 feet within about 75 feet. But look at what's waiting for it on the That is a cluster of thunderstorms over Palm Beach County with lightning flashing all around it. South Florida was loaded with moisture, okay, and there was even a flood watch in effect. And that's the kind of air where storms don't just pop up, they shoot straight up and they shoot up fast. The weather balloon out of Miami for that morning showed storms could get up to around 44,000 feet tall. Now, a thunderstorm doesn't have to produce a tornado or damaging winds at the ground to be a serious threat to an airplane. Down on the ground, there really wasn't a severe thunderstorm warning or anything for this storm. And at Palm Beach's own airport, It was just light rain, gusty wind, and some some lightning off to the west, but there was a warning for our pilots. It's called a convective sigmet, and it covered this exact area, saying that these storm tops were over 45,000 feet, and that kind of warning really matters when you're flying at around 35,000 feet, which is where the plane was. One of the most dangerous things about thunderstorms is that sometimes you can't actually see where the strongest one is, especially from 35,000 feet, and that's the first clue here. From space, this whole area looks like one big smooth white cloud. That's the anvil, cloud that spreads out whenever a thunderstorm runs into a ceiling where it can't climb any higher. And the top of this one was around 48,000 feet, even higher than what that weather balloon said that the storms could get. From a satellite, you couldn't see a single tower poking out of it. But if you look at the radar under it, you can see the storm. A strong storm core buried in the middle of all that cloud. And from inside of the clouds, there's nothing out the window that tells you where this is. At about 1245, the crew tells air traffic control that they've got light, clear ice that's manageable and moderate turbulence. The air outside of the jet was about minus 47 degrees Celsius. And at that temperature, water cannot stay liquid. So the ice up there was ice crystals, millions of them blowing off the top of the storm. And ice crystals are sneaky because they show up a lot weaker on radar than rain. Then the crew reports that they're picking up precipitation and they asked to climb another 2000 feet. And air traffic control clears them to do it. At 1247 In 57 and 56 seconds, the jet starts that. And it starts it right over the strongest part of the storm. In just 20 seconds, it goes up about 450 feet, and it picks up speed while it does it. Then at 1248 and 17 seconds, the nose drops. And from there, everything starts to happen fast. Within 20 seconds, the jet is coming down at 20,000 feet per minute. And it keeps speeding up from there, faster than its own transponder could even report. 12 seconds into the dive, the crew calls a mayday. It goes past its maximum speed, and it rolls into a tightening turn. to the right. In 76 seconds after the nose dropped, it hit the ground near Military Trail. So now the question is, what was that jet flying through right when all this started? And to answer that, we have to look inside of the storm. This is that same storm from the side. We build it from the Miami radar sliced right along the exact path that the jet flew. Down here at the bottom, you can see red, and that's the core of the storm, okay? That's where the rain was the heaviest. And this tower rising up out of it is the storm building up. And this line here, that's the jet Now, one more important thing here about the height. 35,000 feet is what the jet's altimeter said, and that's what the crew and air traffic control called it. But on a warm day like Sunday, the air stretched out. So 35,000 on the altimeter was actually probably closer to 37,000 feet above the ocean. And when you put the jet at its real height, it's flying right through the top of this storm, right over the core. Now, that red core is the strongest part of the storm down low. But for a jet at 35,000 to 37,000 feet, what matters is what's happening thousands of feet above it. So, here's what I noticed. People think that when an airplane gets to 35,000 feet, it's flying above the weather, but just look at what this thunderstorm was doing over Florida. This is the radar at the jet's altitude, at the exact spot where the nose dropped. At 1244, just four minutes before, there's barely anything there, just a faint echo on the radar. Then look at the very next scan at 1249, right after the jet came through. It's a solid echo right in the jet's path. The top of the storm grew straight up into the jet's altitude in the same few minutes the jet was flying over it. And by 1254, it was already fading again. And Doppler radar shows the top of that storm blowing air out in both directions, right where the jet crossed. And that's what you see whenever air is rushing up through the middle of a storm. My rough estimate is that air was going up a few thousand feet per minute. And the lightning in that cell was flashing two to four times a minute. And it peaked at 1247, the minute before the dive began. So here's everything we know. The jet flew over the core of a thunderstorm whose top was growing into into the altitude of the jet. at the exact moment, and this was all under a big anvil cloud that hid all of it. But what we still don't know is exactly what turned that climb into a dive. What could even cause a jet flying hundreds of miles per hour at 35,000 feet to suddenly start falling at more than 20,000 feet per minute? There are a few things investigators are going to have to look at in a case like this, and these are possibilities, not answers right now. But the first thing that they're going to look at is the edge of If you fly out of rising air and into sinking air and the wings suddenly suddenly loses some of the lift that it was getting, that's a big problem, and that's going to be one of the things that they look at first. The second thing is airspeed sensors. If ice crystals block these things, the instruments can show a speed that isn't real, and that can cause all kinds of problems. And the third thing is just the overall limits up there. Way up at that height, a jet like this flies in a pretty narrow window between too slow and too fast. This one was cruising at about 72% of the speed of sound, and its limit was 81%. So there's not a lot of room Air around you starts doing a bunch of wild stuff. And then there's everything that has nothing to do with weather, like the autopilot, the trim, or something mechanical. Any of those, or none of them, could be what happened here. The NTSB is going to go through the recorders, the airplane, and all of the weather data, and that's how we're going to find out. But as a meteorologist who loves aviation and airplanes and stuff, I just had to dig into this, and I wanted to share what I found. Obviously, our thoughts are with the families of the people whose lives were lost in this situation. It's a terrible thing to see. But once again, this video is not meant to speculate. It's just going over the meteorology, what we know for sure, and the rest is going to be up to the NTSB to figure it out. When the NTSB does put out its first report, I'll go through the weather side again with all of that data as well to make sure that, you know, we didn't miss anything. And also, I feel like this is a good explanation as to why it is important that planes go around thunderstorms. A lot of people complain whenever there's a delay or something because the plane has to go around a storm. Well, you know, there's a lot of good reasons for that. So make sure you subscribe to the channel. channel and I will see you in the next one.