Orbiting Jupiter takes place in the winter months, and the changing weather is a pervasive motif throughout the novel. Snow and ice cover much of the Maine town in which Jack and Joseph live. In early chapters, the weather creates a sense of emptiness: “everything around us was only white. The ground, the trees, the clapboard of the church, the sky” (34). At the same time, Joseph tries to appear empty as he tries to distance himself from the other characters and render his personality and history invisible to Jack. Another negative association of the weather exists in Jack’s own trauma, represented by the drowning of the yellow dog, which also took place in the winter months; not only does this magnify Jack’s anxiety when Joseph walks onto the river, but it foreshadows the death of Joseph in these elements.

Before the Hurds enact their winter ritual of ice skating, the winter weather seems treacherous. After they clear the snow, however, Jack evokes the season’s beauty: “the cold on your eyes and the cold in your mouth, the shine of the moonlight and the firelight on the ice, and my mother and father holding hands and skating together” (67). This evening of togetherness in the cold is not only aesthetically beautiful, it has emotional value as well.