via #SpaceWeather.com

"THE GREAT SOLAR STORM OF MARCH 1940: This story is shocking. On March 24, 1940, a solar storm hit Earth so hard it made copper wires in the United States crackle with 800 volts of electricity. A New York Times headline declared that a 'sunspot tornado' had arrived, playing havoc with any signal that had to travel through metal wires.

"What caused the high voltages? Love's team examined old magnetogram records from the date of the storm and found evidence that two coronal mass ejections #CMEs hit Earth only 1.82 hours apart. The double blow rattled Earth's magnetic field in a complicated way most single CMEs do not.

"This could be a harbinger of things to come," says Love. Modern studies show that as many as 5 CMEs leave the sun every day during Solar Maximum. With #solarcycle25 underway and intensifying, a double hit could definitely happen again.

"A similar storm today might not significantly impact communications; we live in the wireless age of cell phones. Electricity is another matter. Modern power systems depend on long wires to shuttle electricity across the country. A repeat of 1940 could interfere with their operations. Love notes that the 1940 voltages exceed NERC power-grid industry benchmarks for 100-year storms. As a result, some modern power grids might not be ready to handle the shock of another 1940 event."

https://spaceweather.com/images2023/09aug23/headline_strip.jpg

Now we know how a solar storm took out a fleet of Starlinks

by Carolyn Collins, April 3, 2023

"The folks at Starlink found that out the hard way in February 2022. On January 29th that year, the sun belched out a class M 1.1 flare and related coronal mass ejection. Material from the sun traveled out on the solar wind and arrived at Earth a few days later. On February 3, Starlink launched a group of 49 satellites to an altitude only 130 miles above Earth's surface. They didn't last long, and now solar physicists know why."

#SolarFlare #SolarFlares #SpaceWeather #SolarCycle24 #CarringtonEvent #SolarWind #CMEs #KesslerSyndrome

Read more: https://phys.org/news/2023-04-solar-storm-fleet-starlinks.html

May 19, 2023

SURPRISE GEOMAGNETIC STORM: Surprising forecasters, a crack opened in Earth's magnetic field on May 19th. #Solar wind poured through the gap, sparking a G2-class #geomagnetic storm. Naked-eye auroras were visible across many northern-tier US states while photographic auroras descended as far south as Missouri (latitude +40.2N):

"'The night started off with a surprise passage of #Starlink satellites whose 21 or so members flared to incredibly bright for a few seconds,' says photographer Dan Bush of Albany, Missouri. 'Then the red auroras came and were visible to my camera for about an hour or so.'

"This event was probably caused by a near-miss #CME--one of many that left the sun last week on trajectories slightly off the sun-Earth line. South-pointing magnetic fields in the CME's wake washed over Earth. Those south-pointing fields partially cancelled Earth's north-pointing magnetic field, lowering our defenses against the solar wind."

#SolarFlare #SolarFlares #SpaceWeather #SolarCycle24 #CarringtonEvent #SolarWind #CMEs

https://spaceweather.com/