Jupiter's Shrinking Storm

The biggest storm on any world in the solar system is getting smaller.

- Ken Croswell

It’s snowing, but the clouds are red. The wind howls at 400 miles an hour, faster than a hurricane. And it’s colder than the North Pole.

Welcome to the largest storm on any world in the solar system.

This storm is bigger than any on Earth. In fact, it’s bigger than Earth itself! And it has been raging for more than 100 years.

Named the Great Red Spot, this storm is on Jupiter, the largest planet that goes around the Sun. The storm is an oval, shaped like an egg. But it’s shrinking. No one knows why— or what it will do next.

Astronomers discovered the Great Red Spot by looking at Jupiter through telescopes. In the late 1800s, the spot was 25,500 miles long—more than three times bigger than Earth. In 1979, spacecraft flew past Jupiter and saw that the storm was only 14,500 miles long.

Smaller and Rounder