A U.S. P-8 Poseidon aircraft that was scheduled to take off for the search area in the early afternoon was grounded along with other planned departures, said Lt. Comm. Adam Schantz of the U.S. Navy.
The search teams that have been out over the remote area of ocean Thursday have been "beaten up," he said.
The visibility is almost zero, with clouds reaching down to the surface of the water, as well as severe turbulence and icing, Schantz said.
Flight crews hope to be back in the air Friday if the weather clears, he said. But the Australian maritime agency said it expects conditions to remain bad for another 24 hours.
This is the second time this week that operations have been put on hold because of harsh conditions in the isolated patch of ocean roughly 1,500 miles southwest of Perth. No search missions took place on Tuesday because of stormy weather.
The delay prolongs an already protracted hunt, now in its 20th day, for the missing Boeing 777, which disappeared March 8 over Southeast Asia with 239 people on board.
Citing an analysis of satellite data, Malaysian authorities say the plane ended its errant journey in the southern Indian Ocean. But they still haven't been able to establish why it lost contact with air traffic control and flew so far off course.
For the time being, the suspension of the search dims hopes that the teams might soon be able to pinpoint and retrieve objects spotted in satellite images of the ocean captured over the past two weeks.
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