Please excuse this layman's intrusion and posting mainstream media but this article has some info on the weather that is pertinent and seems to have been sourced to knowledgeable persons who are on the same page as the discussion here.
Air France jet's flight-control system under scrutiny - Los Angeles Times
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"...Meanwhile, new analysis of the weather in the vicinity at the time of the crash appears to cast doubt on earlier reports that the plane encountered severe thunderstorms, lightning and wind gusts. Though there were storms, they were almost certainly less intense than those sometimes encountered above the United States, and lightning was at least 150 miles away, said Greg Forbes, severe-weather expert for the Weather Channel.
Forbes said an examination of weather data for Sunday, including satellite images, indicated updrafts of perhaps 20 mph, far from the initial reports of 100 mph.
"I wouldn't expect it to be enough to break apart the plane," Forbes said.
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"Air France executives said the plane had sent out a series of messages indicating technical failures, confirming news reports in Brazil and data that U.S. aviation experts had already gained access to.
A series of serious electronic breakdowns occurred on the Airbus over a four-minute period before the jet plunged into the sea, said Robert Ditchey, an aeronautical engineer, pilot and former airline executive.
The sequence started with an autopilot failure and a loss of the air data inertial reference unit, a system of gyroscopes and electronics that provides information on speed, direction and position. That system has been involved in two previous incidents that caused Airbus jetliners to plunge out of control, though the pilots were able to recover.
The automated messages then indicate that a fault occurred in one of the computers for the major control surfaces on the rear of the plane. Such a failure would have compounded the problems, particularly if the pilots were flying through even moderate turbulence.
The last message indicates that multiple failures were occurring, including pressurization of the cabin. Such a message would have reflected either a loss of the plane's pressurization equipment or a breach of the fuselage, resulting in rapid decompression."
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