First Earth-facing X Class Solar Flare In Many Years Has Just Occurred

The first X-class flare that is directed directly toward Earth has just occurred this morning and the CME is due to arrive over the weekend. Protect your computerized devices and expect possible grid outages during that time.

 

No worry about anything but HF radio communications. HF means high frequency which is 3 to 30 megahertz or megacycles. That is basically amateur and shortwave radio frequencies. While the 10-80 meter bands will be affected for any ionospheric communication, IE skip as used in long-distance CB or 11 meters or any HF DX, VHF or UHF will not be affected. No worries about protecting computers and no reason grids should fail as satellite communications should not be affected. Cell phones will not be affected. HF frequencies depending on the ionosphere will be out for about an hour only. Ground waves even on the HF bands will not be affected.

If you have a favorite Voice of America program from Europe on 30 meters, it will be dead for about an hour. The background sound on your shortwave HF receiver will just disappear. The effect is just like unhooking the antenna and shunting the terminals. I experienced this a few times in all my years dealing with HF radio. Some might find it interesting that 10-11 meters skip DX communication reaches its peak when several sunspots appear on the sun's surface.

The sunspot cycle is a cycle of approximately 11 years between successive peaks in sunspot activity. What is less known and understood is that with each successive 11-year peak, the magnetic field of the sunspots is reversed. So the sunspot cycle is, in reality, a 22-year cycle when the magnetic fields of the sunspots are taken into account.

While it is possible a solar flare can affect satellite communications since they send an electromagnetic signal through the ionosphere, it is unlikely because of the ultra-high frequency and mode of modulation. So far the only noted results were a brief blackout of HF radio mainly affecting South America.

 

You must be a Ham, @Faye Fox. The CME arrival should temporarily improve propagation prior to subsequentially blacking it out. The grid may be affected, as it was a 1X class flare that caused the CME. We will see... Things won't begin until Saturday.

Severe solar weather is often heralded by dramatic auroral displays, northern and southern lights, and magnetic storms that occasionally affect satellites, radio communications and power systems. The flare and solar ejection has also generated a storm of high-velocity particles, and the number of particles with ten million electron-volts of energy in the space near Earth is now 10,000 times greater than normal. The increase of particles at this energy level still poses no appreciable hazard to air travelers, astronauts or satellites, and the NOAA SEC rates this radiation storm as a moderate S2 to S3, on a scale that goes to S5.

 

Pretty!



As recently as a year ago, I knew how to post GIFs, which this is supposed to be, but that ability has somehow been lost.

 

I won't worry about protecting any electronic equipment because in a worst-case scenario all that is going to happen is a brief communications loss that in no way will harm your computer or cell phones or the grid. There will be no dangerous electromagnetic waves zapping your electronic devices.

First, you must understand what a CME is. The use of initials in science can be scary, I see a lot of worry over tonight and tomorrow morning's events that will be the corona discharge part from the coming solar wind caused by yesterday's solar flare. CME stands for coronal mass ejection.

I might explain further that the reason high-frequency communication is affected as it was yesterday mainly in South America, is because those frequencies or WAVELENGTHS reflect or bounce off the ionosphere and solar flares can disrupt the ionosphere so these signals don't bounce and they cannot be received except by ground wave. For distance or skip communication, these frequencies go dead. A satellite uses point-to-point (no reflection) ultra-high frequencies of a very SHORT WAVELENGTH and these signals pass easily through the ionosphere. The increased magnetic activity caused by a solar storm has little if any effect on UHF communications especially in these times of digital communications.

What I do know is that no way this solar storm is going to damage any electronic equipment any more than Y2K was going to render all digital electronics useless. What is possible is that our corrupt leadership may use this event to cause a blackout and panic and gain more control. I really don't think that will happen, but after the events of the last two years, nothing they do surprises me. I had more attacks on my WIFI yesterday than in a long time and it was unrelated to the solar flare because the internet was still going, just my WIFI shut off due to repeated attacks as it did to many on the same cable system as I. Beware that scammers and corrupt governments use events like this to instill fear and take more control or rip you off.

Here is the writeup by NOAA

The National Space Weather Prediction Center has issued a G3 Geomagnetic Storm Watch in effect for Saturday. The impacts would likely begin late Friday night local time, peaking Saturday morning. A G3 storm will typically produce auroras for most northern U.S. states, with some visibility possible as far south of Iowa and Nebraska. Geomagnetic storms can sometimes cause disruptions to the GPS network and power grids, but any impacts with this event should be minor to nonexistent.

So, if you want to live in fear about something you may not fully understand and unplug and unhook cables from all your electronic devices, then do so. I will suggest that lightning nearby is far more likely to cause an outage and may damage electronics, whereas damage to electronics on earth has never been known to result from a solar storm. Why not go the extra mile for protection and unhook your computer, pull the battery from your cell phone and other electronic digital devices, put them in an aluminum box, and bury them? The metal box well-grounded will be the maximum protection.

As for me, I will be up early in the morning (all electronics fully hooked up and on) in hopes of seeing the beautiful corona discharges. Only a few times have I seen God's lights and I don't plan on missing them in the morning. In the past one of my early morning 75-meter magnetic loop transmitting antenna experiments put on a corona light show that had the police knocking on my door. Now I leave such aural displays up to God as they are more impressive and don't cause neighborhood concern and I don't get blamed for causing the burnout of the neighbor's old piece of junk VCR.

 

With my organic cotton cloth mask and sterling silver
bra donned, I am going to my specialized hairdressers
for a colloidal silver hair treatment. I hear the solar flares
may cause a new viral variant, breast cancer, and/or head
skin cancer. I am taking proactive preventive measures.

 

Nah, it was pure laziness! The hosting thing I use for gifs seemed to have gotten more confusing since the last time I used it, so I went to the other hosting thing that's really simple but only does images.

Here's the wrathful Sun God in all his glory, spitting and howling!



༼ ༼ ༼ ´･ ‿ ･` ༽ ༽つ

 

Never used photobucket! Couldn't get it to work for some reason. Lunapic is free and fun, but is now hiding general url codes in the Imgur thingie, which took me a while to find.