Amateur astronomers and Cassini are watching a storm on Saturn. For some reason they call it a blizzard.
Here's the full article at Space.com:
Giant Blizzard Raging on Saturn
Let's see why they call it a blizzard:
The Cassini spectrometer obtained data on March 25 and 26 that showed larger than expected amounts of phosphine, a gas typically found in Saturn's deep atmosphere, and an indicator that powerful currents were lifting material upward into the upper troposphere.
The spectrometer data also showed that the tropopause, which is the dividing line between the serene stratosphere and the lower churning troposphere, was about 1 degree Fahrenheit (minus 17.2 degrees Celsius) colder in the storm cell than in neighboring areas.
"A balloonist floating about 100 kilometers (62 miles) down from the bottom of Saturn's calm stratosphere would experience an ammonia-ice blizzard with the intensity of Snowmageddon," said Brigette Hesman, a composite infrared spectrometer team member and assistant research scientist at the University of Maryland.
Snowmaggedon? I remember that! We got around 20 inches. Places to the north near Baltimore got over 30 inches. Luckily it was a couple of days before I had to drive up there again; I was worried about reduced visibility at intersections but I never ran into (hah) any problems.
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