<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>nothing remotely like a hurricane? with characteristic vertical structure thereof? and it appears merely as a vortex, but, really, is not one? <p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />What he's saying is that it may not fit the terrestrial definition of a hurricane, which so far no non-terrestrial storm has done (not even the Great Red Spot).<br /><br />That said, this looks a lot more like a hurricane than any other extra-terrestrial storm yet observed, because unlike those other storms, this one has an eyewall. It seems beyond reason that the same exact mechanisms can be in place on Saturn, so it's very intriguing. What creates the eyewall? Terrestrial hurricanes are driven in large part by the oceans. Saturn lacks oceans, although it may have something that functions in a similar way to drive this structure. What's interesting, though, is that this is centered on Saturn's pole. That makes it very different from terrestrial hurricanes, which generally start out as tropical storms. However, polar vortices are known on Earth, and have been obsered on other worlds as well, so its seems reasonable to suppose that this is more like those polar vortices than like a terrestrial hurricane.<br /><br />But it's a very weird structure. This should keep planetary meteorologists busy for quite a while. <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em> -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>