When the next mission to Mars lifts off in April, another robotic probe will be sent to learn more about conditions on a planet where humans may one day live. One great reason that we send robots: They don't mind crummy weather. When we humans follow, to Mars or anywhere else in the solar system, weather extremes like none we know await.

At Mars, Hurricane Andrew would stick in the memory as a gentle breeze. The discovery of the South Pole back on Earth would be retold as Roald Amundsen's pleasant summer stroll. And the oppressive heat and biting sandstorms of the Mojave? Hang on to your cosmic hats.

Because the wildest, wackiest and worst weather known does not occur on Earth. For truly tempestuous temperatures, take a trip to roasting Venus or frigid Pluto. Want some wind? The giant planets will blow you away.

And before you say, "But Mars is the planet we're most likely to colonize," consider tornadoes as tall as Mount Everest.

More than just a thrill

Why should we care about extraterrestrial weather? Besides eventual preservation of the species, one obvious answer is that bad weather is exhilarating, especially when viewed from just far away enough to avoid death. And scientists have a couple of other reasons that are slightly more, well, scientific.

For one, weather is a manifestation of the movement of matter and energy through a planet's atmosphere, said Jonathan Lunine, professor of planetary sciences at the University of Arizona.

"As such," explained Lunine, "understanding the types of weather and overall climate states of the planets represents an essential insight into the energy and mass balance of planetary atmospheres, their interaction with the surface and evolution in the short and long term."

Meaning that if we can understand Jupiter's 300-year-old Great Red Spot, for example, we'll know more about the inner Jupiter that we can't see.

Want a reason that's a little closer to home?

Studying the weather on other planets, where conditions sometimes endure for eternities, helps scientists better understand Earth's weather.

"It's harder to predict a storm that's going to disappear in a week or two compared to predicting a storm that has been around for 300 years," said Andrew Ingersoll, a planetary science professor at Caltech.

Mystery winds

Jupiter is not even the worst place for wind. The giant planets don't have continents or oceans to interfere with the flow of gas in the atmosphere. One result is tremendous gusts that exceed 900 miles per hour (400 meters per second) on Saturn and Neptune.

But these winds are puzzling. The root cause of all wind is energy. On Earth, the Sun warms the planet at different rates in different places. These temperature differences create pressure differences, and air moves from high pressure to low pressure to try to equalize the differences.

The giant planets also generate a little energy of their own. Still, because it is so far from the Sun, Jupiter gets about one-twentieth the amount of energy, compared to its surface area, as Earth, according to Ingersoll. And Neptune has about one-twentieth the energy of Jupiter to work with.

"Yet there is an inverse relation between energy input and the speed of the winds," Ingersoll said. "Neptune is the windiest planet, Jupiter is intermediate, and Earth has the weakest winds. This inverse relation is a mystery."

Jupiter's moon Io has a thin, fluid atmosphere that is somewhat like Mars'. These atmospheres can turn mostly to ice at night or during the winter. The effect? Io's atmosphere is so thin that winds reach supersonic speeds as the gas expands into the vacuum on the nightside, according to Ingersoll.

While Earth's weather may seem tame compared to some of these crazy places, Ingersoll notes one important feature -- a scientific fact -- that forecasters still wrestle with every day: Our planet has the most unpredictable and inexplicable weather in the solar system.

Other news about weather in our solar system
Venus: No Lightning, But a Strange Green Glow
Jupiter: Cassini Snaps Earth-like Weather
Jupiter: Cassini Makes First Color Movie of Clouds
Titan: Earth-Like Weather and Methane Rain
The Sun: Space Weather