Exploring the Impact of Weather on the Recent Plane Crash in Central Florida

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BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. – Wednesday, someone happened to be in the right place at the right time. A good Samaritan performed a water rescue in the Indian River when a small aircraft crash-landed during a period of significant weather.

It is currently unconfirmed if the weather indeed brought this plane down, but regardless, given the conditions in play at the time, it’s safe to say the weather likely played a role.

If you’ve ever heard or read the phrase, “We’re in for some chop,” there’s a lot of reality and science behind it.

If you’ve flown in your lifetime, there are moments where the plane will suddenly shake violently. This is called turbulence. Now, for us it may seem like solely something trying to jolt us out of our cabin seats, but turbulence can come in a variety of ways and can rapidly go from near-normal to extreme in seconds.

Let’s break it down!

We saw a large break in our rainfall during the early morning to afternoon time frame yesterday. A good majority of us did see a lot of rain the day prior, Tuesday, and this was expected to more or less continue throughout the night.

Normally with so much moisture at every level of our atmosphere, if you were to cut a piece of it like a multi-layered cake, it typically results in little to no energy for strong thunderstorms to feed off of.

But because we did in fact see a break in the rains and got the sun to come out, warming the ground and instigating evaporation, there was an increase in what energy was available for thunderstorms to quickly bloom.

At ground level, they managed to produce some very powerful winds, strong enough that they were capable of knocking over large structures like a crane.

Up in the air, things can get even more dicey. A phenomena called turbulence exists in and around thunderstorms. A rule of thumb we practiced in the United States Air Force as weather forecasters for our pilots and aircraft is, severe to extreme turbulence is “inferred” in and around storms.

This means, regardless of the forecast, pilots and those operating small to large aircraft should steer clear of any bad weather brewing in their flight path.

We also had different “air frames” when helping our troops plan their operations, missions, and routes. There were four different tiers, ranging from small single-rotor or prop planes to the enormous tankers maybe you’ve seen occasionally flying at air shows. The tanker planes are very similar to the commercial airliners we fly on when traveling.

Turbulence affects each of these types of aircraft differently. We had to convert for our personnel to vividly understand what risks and impacts to expect when flying. A small single-prop aircraft could be feeling severe or extreme turbulence, but then for your standard 737 or 747, that same extreme turbulence would likely be felt as light to moderate.

Think of it like a football tryout. You’re not going to put the smaller-sized player on your defensive lineup, they’d be trampled. You want the big, sizable players on the front lines leading the defensive strategy to help stop the ball movement.

The plane that went down yesterday was a smaller aircraft, which likely felt the effects of the fast-moving storms in the area brutally.

Again, it isn’t confirmed if there was a thunderstorm or turbulence that caused the mishap. Thankfully, the folks onboard were safely taken to shore.

As we close out, there are also several variations of turbulence that meteorologists can forecast. Usually, these forecasts are provided for FAA and Air Traffic Control teams.