QUESTION: What cam you estimate in the future about Neptune's weather with the findings such as the bright cloud? ??????? ANSWER from Heidi Hammel on April 18, 1996: The one thing we know for sure about Neptune's weather in the future is that it will be interesting! Based on what we have seen so far, it looks like Neptune may have a fairly stable weather pattern for the five years or so. By stable, I mean that it continue to have a smattering of moderately bright clouds at red wavelengths, maybe a dark spot or two, and a dark band around the southern hemisphere at blue and green wavelengths. Sometime, probably about five or more years from now, Neptune may develop another very bright cloud system, like we saw in 1994. It could be in either hemisphere; we don't have enough information to know which is more likely yet. This very bright cloud system may signal the formation of a new Great Dark Spot. All of this is purely conjecture, based on the limited data we already have. Only time will tell us what Neptune's weather is really going to be like.