my father and I have argued about tires and hydroplaning for ages, he always tells me about aircraft studies where air pressure in the tire has more of an effect than anything, but this is at 100+ mph on a vehicle that has a lot of down force.

our cars are light and once the layer of water is 1" deep you are going to hydroplane at some speed, that is a function of how much water your tire profile can pump out and how much water is being pumped in by forward motion. At some point by moving faster you exceed your tires ability to push water out of the way, once the water is deep enough your tire is sitting on a nearly 0 friction surface. Higher air pressure inside the tire makes it less deformable, which keeps higher pressure pockets of water from erupting out the sides until you get to that magic speed for that air pressure, which is where the directional instability comes from.

The last thing would be where the width comes in. if the amount of weight in the contact patch is greater than the resistance of the water in that area the water is forced away, then the tire would sink wouldn't it... so a wider contact patch would be more likely to float.

speed is an important factor. at 0 velocity your car probably won't float in 5 feet of water. at say a velocity of say 40 your car would need to be in water up to the tire's bead to float, increasing velocity to 100 your car would now float in maybe only slightly more than the tread depth. increase that velocity to 110 and you would need a layer of water quite a bit thinner, which is why dangerous high speed hydroplaning can sneak up on you suddenly. { apparently, the resistance of the water, it's ability goes up at a square of speed, at 2x the speed the water can support 4 times more weight. }

Best thing to do would be to know what hydroplaning feels and sounds like in the moments before it gets dangerous. Maybe the most important thing... recovery from mistakes.