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(CNN) -- There is a region of the world where the weather is always hot and humid and it rains almost every day of the year. Sounds predictable, right? But weather in the Intertropical Convergence Zone, or ITCZ, can be volatile and dangerous.

Air France Flight 447 went down in a volatile zone along the equator between South America and Africa.

Air France Flight 447 went down in a volatile zone along the equator between South America and Africa.

The ITCZ is a belt of low pressure that wraps around the planet. Clouds and storms form along it because it is literally where the winds of the world's hemispheres meet.

The height of these storms also can tower to more than 10 miles in the air. Even if you stacked hundreds of the world's tallest skyscrapers on top of each other, they still wouldn't reach the tops of the biggest thunderstorms of the ITCZ.

Sometimes, though, pilots are forced to fly through them
That's because commercial airliners cannot fly above 50,000 feet
The crew of Air France Flight 447 reported severe turbulence shortly before the plane disappeared.