Extreme weather: Massive hurricanes meet on Jupiter
By Ron Cowen
Amateur and professional sky watchers are pointing their telescopes at Jupiter this month to record what could be a historic encounter. Two huge storms on the giant planet are beginning to encounter each other, and no one knows what will happen as these titans meet.
The more prominent of the swirling storms, Jupiters Great Red Spot, is twice as wide as Earth. It has endured for more than 300 years. The other storm, about one-third as wide, has persisted in an adjacent band of clouds since the 1930s. The Great Red Spot encounters storms in this band about once every 2 years. The current interaction is different from earlier ones because what had been three oval storms have merged into one (SN: 11/18/00, p. 328).