Severe Space Weather

[AdamG]

...and teaching paper map, compass and protractor land nav skills was pointless.

Antti Pulkkinen, who leads NASA's "Solar Shield" satellite-based detection system at the Goddard Space Flight Center, said the cloud of ionized particles from Tuesday's violent "coronal mass ejection" will largely miss Earth, giving some North American residents a glimpse of the aurora borealis, or northern lights, this weekend. "It will not be a major event [for] the power grid," he said.

However, NASA spacecraft detected a much larger eruption last weekend on the backside of the sun headed away from Earth, generating a much faster-moving cloud.

"If this event was on a collision course with the U.S., we would have had a major space weather event," Pulkkinen said. "In this regard, we got lucky."

http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2011/06...ids-63979.html

"The worst-case scenario is an extreme event," says Michael Hesse, chief of NASA's Space Weather Laboratory at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. "If it were to happen and we don't take any precautions, it would probably knock out our power grid for an extended period of time and destroy a sizable fraction of our satellite infrastructure."

"This is not something we expect to happen tomorrow," he cautions. "But it's like the impact of a hurricane on a specific location. You don't expect it to happen tomorrow, but you might want to think about if it were to happen."

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2386623,00.asp

[CloseDanger]

http://www.lmsal.com/solarsoft/last_events/

[AdamG]

June 22, 2011 - NOAA forecasts, supported by guidance from the WSA-Enlil solar wind model, are projecting CME arrival mid to late day UTC on June 23. The CME does appear to be clearly Earth-directed, so some effect is almost certain. The bulk of the disturbance is still expected on June 24, with G1 (Minor) and isolated G2 (Moderate) levels of Geomagnetic Storming expected for the duration of the event. High latitude aurora watchers should be on alert Thursday and Friday night.

http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/