Earth is relatively close to the center of the track. But Saturn is more than a billion kilometers farther out. Saturn takes about 30 times longer than Earth to make it once around the Sun. So there is a span of 30 Earth years between Saturn's storms. But if you measure in Saturn years, the storms strike each summer.
Scientists say it has something to do with how the solar system formed.
According to one theory, it happened about 4.5 billion years ago, when an enormous cloud of gas and dust collapsed and began to spin around its center. The leftover gas and dust in the spinning cloud gradually stuck together in bigger and bigger clumps. These clumps eventually became the nine planets. When the Sun began producing energy, it threw off powerful winds. The clumps far from the Sun, however, were able to collect and hold onto huge envelopes of superlight hydrogen and helium gas.