4 X class solar flares have erupted from the sun in the last 24 hours.  Their coronal mass ejections will strike earth this weekend.  With 4 of them hitting us at the same time there is a chance that it takes out chunks of the power grid like a EMP does.  Keep your eye on the news even they should be reporting on this soon.  Here is a video with a better explanation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QCA3jouCKk

Update:
We’ve hit the G4 storm levels multiple times.

Good chance the Northern lights will be able to be seen in a lot of the US tonight. Post your pictures if you get any!

Update #2
We have hit G5 storm levels first time since 2003.
Attached File


Update #3.
X5.89 flare and a X1.60 have fired off in the last few hours of 2255 CST May 10th.  In the morning we will be able to see if these storms will impact the earth. These would make 8 to hit us in a couple of days.  If they do impact us the northern lights should be spectacular again.  More information will be provided in the thread as we get more information.
Amazing pictures everyone!

Doom

Doom

Doom

Doom

Doom

https://twitter.com/SunWeatherMan

Well, it was nice knowing you ARFcom.  

Back in my days working LORAN we’d know of solar flares about 15 minutes before the space weather people, we had a special phone number to call.

The time it took to transmit a pulse and pick it up hundreds of miles away would start swinging wildly by a few hundred nanoseconds and screw up all of our shit.

It seems like solar flares are heading toward us every other week, and nothing.  I'm not trying to troll, but explain to me in layman's terms why this 4 non-events are going to be an event.

ohnoes, what the hell am I going to do now?

Spaceweather is predicting a strong storm but nothing in the class that would cause disruption.     i'll believe them over some youtube video.

They will mess up GPS accuracy.  So if you use survey grade GPS be sure to triple check your data.

NOAA is predicting a 25% chance for a storm to extreme storm on the 11th and that was before the x2.25 released 3.5 hours ago.  When the Enlil Spirals at NASA and NOAA update we should have a better idea at what’s coming.

But will any of these CMEs actually hit earth?

Just because they get ejected doesn't mean we are in the path.

The video didn't actually address this, so i am guess it is bullshit.

Pretty active sunspot, though, and Spaceweather points out that it "has grown so large, it now rivals the great Carrington sunspot of 1859".  So it could still fart out an Earth-scorcher if it took a mind to.

Looks like it's about to rotate out of the danger zone, though it will be interesting to see what it looks like when it comes back around.  If it's bigger and angrier it could mean trouble.

The video literally shows the Enlil spiral that shows two hitting earth. Once the Enlil spiral is updated it should show all 4 hitting.

It should get real sporty in 2025 when we reach the peak of the cycle.

Anyway, are the Stallions on the tube tomorrow?

So 75% chance it is just strong with minimal impact to the grid.

Well Spaceweather.com is predicting a G3 ( moderate ) then a G-4 (Strong) solar storm with radial velocity at 800 and plasma levels at 100, both at the top of the scale.

Moderate and Strong seem to be in disagreement with the radial velocity and plasma levels on their charts, so i don't know what to make of that, but I admit I don't really understand all this stuff.

They specifically state that although the sunspot is a Carrington Event size, the CMEs it has spit out so far and not Carrington level events.

I am not sure I trust them to come out ahead of time and say they expect a Carrington level even even if they thought it was going to happen.

I think they would down play it no matter what aznd it kind of sounds like that is what they are doing maybe.

I hope so, but expect to be disappointed yet again

Forecast...
Mid to late day on 09 May, unsettled to active conditions are possible
as glancing effects from a CME that departed the Sun on 06 May are
anticipated to influence Earth. By late on 10 May, the two halo CMEs
from 8 May are anticipated to arrive at Earth, increasing the
geomagnetic response to G1 (Minor) storm levels. Early on 11 May,
conditions are likely to reach G3 (Strong) storm levels as the bulk of
four CMEs moves past Earth. While confidence in timing is fairly high,
confidence in magnitude/strength of the geomagnetic response to the CME
arrival is low to moderate.


They are saying G3 levels, then basically say, they don't believe their own forecast.

G3 don't be concerned, and then leaving themselves an out if it is significantly wrong and much worse than G3.

I just got an alert on this.
Its the real deal.
This is incredibly large and has fired off two x class flares not at earth though.
It haz potential.

Later today NOAA will have updated model along with NASA. Every one uses their information. The consecutive impacts is what can cause problems with these CME’s. By themselves they are not strong enough to cause much disruptions but together In succession they can.  I’ll update the thread later today.

Regardless of the doom the northern lights should be amazing this weekend.

The Northern Lights will be active.

:Product: Report of Solar-Geophysical Activity
:Issued: 2024 May 08 2200 UTC
# Prepared jointly by the U.S. Dept. of Commerce, NOAA,
# Space Weather Prediction Center and the U.S. Air Force.
#
Joint USAF/NOAA Solar Geophysical Activity Report and Forecast
SDF Number 129 Issued at 2200Z on 08 May 2024

IA.  Analysis of Solar Active Regions and Activity from 07/2100Z to
08/2100Z: Solar activity has been at high levels for the past 24 hours.
The largest solar event of the period was a X1 event observed at
08/0141Z from Region 3663 (N26W70). There are currently 6 numbered
sunspot regions on the disk.
IB.  Solar Activity Forecast: Solar activity is likely to be high on
days one, two, and three (09 May, 10 May, 11 May).

IIA.  Geophysical Activity Summary 07/2100Z to 08/2100Z: The geomagnetic
field has been at quiet to unsettled levels for the past 24 hours. Solar
wind speed reached a peak of 548 km/s at 08/0256Z.  Electrons greater
than 2 MeV at geosynchronous orbit reached a peak level of 151 pfu.
IIB.  Geophysical Activity Forecast: The geomagnetic field is expected
to be at quiet to active levels on day one (09 May), unsettled to minor
storm levels on day two (10 May) and minor storm to major storm levels
on day three (11 May). Protons have a chance of crossing threshold on
days one, two, and three (09 May, 10 May, 11 May).

III.  Event probabilities 09 May-11 May
Class M    95/95/95
Class X    60/60/60
Proton     25/25/25
PCAF       green

IV.  Penticton 10.7 cm Flux
Observed           08 May 227
Predicted   09 May-11 May 225/225/220
90 Day Mean        08 May 164

V.  Geomagnetic A Indices
Observed Afr/Ap 07 May  006/006
Estimated Afr/Ap 08 May  007/007
Predicted Afr/Ap 09 May-11 May  010/012-026/037-035/050

VI.  Geomagnetic Activity Probabilities 09 May-11 May
A.  Middle Latitudes
Active                35/35/30
Minor Storm           15/30/35
Major-severe storm    01/10/25
B.  High Latitudes
Active                15/10/05
Minor Storm           30/25/20
Major-severe storm    50/65/75


This says 75% chance of a Major / Severe storm on the 11th
and that does not include the 12 which is when the big CME is supposed to hit because at the date / time group this was made, that last CME ( the one early this morning ) had not happened yet.

The hair is standing up on the back of my neck so to speak.

^ that also doesn’t include the x2.25 long duration flare that went off earlier this morning.

Yep, I was making that clear in the post while you were typing this.

what latitudes are considered high latitudes?

I see that.

I’ve been following this space weather since I was in the army.  I’d be running my radio and all of sudden shit wouldn’t work.  An old E-7 would tell us it’s the sun causing the blackout. At first we thought he was nuts turns out it was true and they never taught us that in AIT.

Typically 60 geomagnetic latitude is considered high. Some would say 55.

Without yet knowing the magnitude of the 4th CME the biggest risk with these is that there is yet another large CME that follows and can cross the distance quite rapidly due to the prior CMEs “clearing out” the path between the sun and earth.  You could have a situation like the August 1972 solar storm that made it to earth in less than 15 hours.

Also keep in mind that the X-Ray flux isn’t correlated with the size of the CME. For example the July 2012 solar storm was only X2.25 but the CME is estimated that it would have had Carrington levels of impact on earth if it was earth-directed.

Because they don't really know.  At best it's just an educated guess.  They can crunch all the numbers, look at the history, ionize all the gammas and tighten all the photons, and the sun could still belch out a killer CME ten minutes from now - and all we could do is say "huh, well I'll be damned".

Forecasts aren't predictions. They're notifications that you might want to pay attention to what's going on.

Ok thanks for the clarification.

I thought they had better science than that.

Exactly. The last X flare the x2.25 flare length was 275 minutes in duration.  Which means it was not an impulse flare and most likely had a substantial CME along with it as most long duration flares do.  With 3 CME’s out in front of it good chance it hits sooner than normal.  The Enlil spiral shows the first two almost hitting at the same time cause the second flare caught up to the first.  As mentioned before when these update we should get a much better picture.

On a side note it will be interesting how many starlink satellites are lost over the weekend.  They have lost many before due to solar storms.  With them being in lower earth orbit they are more vulnerable.

Hmm. This could have a significant effect on the bird and squirrel population.

And the 120 meter asteroid 2024 JZ is zipping past us today at 56,000+ MPH, 2.6 million miles away.  Close, but no cigar.

That wasn't clarification, just MHO.  I am no solar weather authority by any stretch of the imagination. It just seems like common sense that when we can't get local weather forecasts 100% correct 100% of the time, space weather will fare no better.  Space weather, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanoes...  we try to understand the forces at play, but at the end of the day there are just too many variables for forecasts to be bulletproof.

It's fun to track, though.  

Maybe Betelgeuse will pop off at the same time and send us a few gamma rays just to mix things up.

What SPF for G4 solar storm?  I could use a little color.

we had one early this morning 5 meters wide pass well inside geosynchronous orbit, inside of 1600 miles ( if I did the AU math right )

Maybe Carrington can save the world from A.I.

Sub'd for updates.

Well things are looking interesting now.

I just read this. Good book typical of Fortschen

From the guy that wrote 1 second after

Spaceweather.com in recent years has taken to fearmongering for clicks. You're better off following Solarham or Spaceweatherlive. Or better yet, learn the basics and interpret the data yourself. There are tons of great tools available.

https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en.html
https://solarham.com/
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/
https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/aiahmi/
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/wsa-enlil-solar-wind-prediction
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/lasco-coronagraph
http://hmi.stanford.edu/data/hmiimage.html

And no, the grid is not going to go down.

Apophis will be coming in 2029, I believe.

Reading this while using my Trimble R12.

Attached File

I remember in the 1990s these were being discussed and we were going to die.

Maybe I'm dead and I'm posting from the beyond.  I'll explain it to my wife later.

Even long duration flares can be impulsive. 3663 fired off 3 X class flares and gobs of M class flares over the last week. Some of those were fairly long duration but none of them were eruptive. (probably due to magnetic caging) but 3664 doesn't seem to have any problems spitting out CMEs.

But yes, CMEs clear the way for follow up CMEs to pancake together so 4 full-halo CMEs and 1 partial halo from a filament snap should hopefully give us a good show this weekend. Also, NOAA still doesn't have the X2.2 CME from this morning modeled in ENLIL yet.

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/wsa-enlil-solar-wind-prediction

I was getting all excited! You ruined the party.

Yawn. How many of these things have we had the past several years? Another nothingburger.