by Kevin Burton
“Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”
That quote isn’t original with me and it’s not original from Mark Twain either, according to some sources.
The quote actually came from Twain’s friend Charles Dudley Warner, according to quoteinvestigator.com and brainyquote.com.
Never knew that.
If memory serves, the late great baseball announcer Vin Scully used the quote on air and attributed it to Twain.
My wife and I have spent some touristy time in Hannibal, Missouri, Twain’s hometown. Come to think of it, we never saw any overpriced wall hangings with the weather quote on it. Now I know why.
Well I never thought the weather was a particularly fascinating topic of discussion anyway, until I found this list from Dictionary Scoop.
This weather talk is out of this world, literally. Below is the scoop, from Dictionary Scoop:
“Weather on Earth might be wild, but compared to other planets, it’s downright boring. Across our solar system—and beyond—insane storms, metallic rain, and atmosphere-shredding winds violently shape alien worlds. Here are ten of the weirdest and most extreme weather events ever observed in space.”
1–Diamond Rain
Location: Neptune & Uranus
In the atmospheres of these ice giants, intense pressure crushes methane into solid carbon, forming diamonds that fall like hail.
Estimates suggest that billions of carats worth of diamonds may exist in the deep interiors of these planets, possibly forming layered structures similar to geological strata.
2–Supersonic Winds
Location: HD 189733b
This exoplanet is bombarded by winds blowing at more than 5,400 mph—about seven times faster than the speed of sound.
Fortunately, all of this is happening far from Earth—HD 189733b is a ‘hot Jupiter’ located 63 light-years away. Its atmosphere endures extreme heat on one side and frigid cold on the other, fueling violent winds that circle the planet.
3–Sulfuric Acid Rain
Location: Venus
Venus has clouds of sulfuric acid that rain—but the droplets evaporate before they hit the surface.
Temperatures on Venus reach 870°F, hot enough to melt lead. Acid droplets form high in the atmosphere but vaporize at lower altitudes, creating a corrosive “rain cycle.”
4-Endless Storm
Location: Jupiter
A storm larger than Earth has been raging on Jupiter for more than 350 years.
First observed in the 1600s, the Great Red Spot is a massive anticyclone with wind speeds exceeding 400 mph. It’s so large that it could easily swallow our planet whole.
5–Polar Hexagon
Location: Saturn
A massive six-sided jet stream spins around Saturn’s north pole. NASA’s Cassini mission captured this bizarre atmospheric pattern, which spans nearly 20,000 miles.
Surprisingly, it’s a persistent weather feature—not a surface structure.
6–Planet-Sized Dust Storms
Location: Mars
Mars is famous for its massive, planet-wide dust storms. These weather events can last for weeks and obscure the entire planet from view.
NASA’s Opportunity rover went silent during one of these dust storms in 2018 and never recovered. The catch? Mars doesn’t have enough atmosphere for the winds to be truly dangerous—sorry, The Martian.
7–Coldest Spot
Location: Boomerang Nebula
The coldest known natural place in the universe is the outer cloud of a dying star. The Boomerang Nebula, located 5,000 light-years away, reaches temperatures near 1 Kelvin—colder than the cosmic background.
This happens because the star’s gas expands so rapidly that it chills below the temperature of empty space itself.
8–Iron Rain
Location: WASP-76b
On this ultra-hot exoplanet, iron vaporizes on the dayside and rains down as molten metal on the nightside.
These extreme temperatures are reached because WASP-76b is tidally locked, with day-side temperatures above 4,000°F.
9–Molecular Tornadoes
Location: The Sun
The Sun hosts giant tornadoes made of superheated plasma. These solar events can be up to 10,000 miles tall and spin at thousands of miles per hour.
They’re driven by magnetic fields and can feed into solar flares and coronal mass ejections—fiery explosions that can even impact Earth.
10–Electric Snow
Location: The Moon
The Moon may experience electrostatic dust storms during lunar dawn and dusk. When the Sun hits the lunar surface, it creates an electric field that lifts tiny dust particles off the ground.
This phenomenon was first suspected during the Apollo missions and has been confirmed through recent satellite observations.
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