Hurricane-like weather on Saturn

A colossal, swirling storm with a well-developed eye is churning at Saturn’s south pole, the first time a truly hurricane-like storm has been detected on a planet other than Earth, NASA images showed Thursday.

The storm on the giant, ringed planet is about 5,000 miles wide, measuring about two-thirds the diameter of Earth, with winds howling clockwise at 350 mph. Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, which swirls counterclockwise, is far bigger, but is less like a hurricane because it lacks the typical eye and eye wall. The images were captured on Oct. 11 by the U.S. space agency’s Cassini spacecraft as it passed about 210,000 miles from Saturn.