Mysterious Hurricane at Saturn's North Pole.

[Polar Maritime]

 

[A.J]

Ah, the infamous hexagonal storm!  must admit, when I saw the first cassini imagery back in 2005 it stood out as one of the weirdest things I'd ever seen....How can a storm form a long lasting geometric pattern?.....Well, being a bit of a theory junky, I've read quite a few articles on this phenomena and the best explanation to date I've seen is that it's caused by a hybrid Rossby Wave, hybrid because it acts like an atmospheric Rossby wave & Oceanic Rossby waves....fascinating stuff...

 

http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/JRD/SAT/Rossby/Rossbyintro.html

 

http://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/70037278

 

and a PDF abstract paper... http://www.clidyn.ethz.ch/papers/ljj_giants.pdf