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.
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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).