Oh the humanity! Now I won't be able to show off my survivalist skills I've been honing!
That's not how it works. First you get the radio interference. That's the R3. Then you get a radiation warning. Right now that's at an S1. Then you get the CME. The one from the X1.3 flare looks to be coming early April 2 UT. They're predicting a G1 geomagnetic storm from it which is really low so it must be a glancing blow (CME went mostly sideways and most of it will miss us). That sounds like good news to me.if I'm reading this correctly it came and went without much of an impact, considering it hit mostly the americas in broad daylight, so no unusual northern lights:
Hi. Where are you getting your data? Just checking the NOAA site and not finding the level of detail ... ??That sunspot AR2975 just won't quit. It just let out an M9.6 solar flare (almost X class). It's too soon to tell if the cme will be heading in our direction. Looks like the CME from the X1.3 flare might miss. They aren't expecting much to come from it anymore.
Not bad, but talks about politics a bit so I would not post those videos here.Check out Ben on YouTube at SUSPICIOUS OBSERVERS. He has great content on space weather in general. "Eyes wide open, Stay safe".
I'm out of the loop here. Why mustard?nope just mustard.
This is interesting. I would like to think that our current knowledge of surge protection and circuit breakers would provide more protection than it did for those telegraph systems during the Carrington event, however we're still susceptible to outages caused by simpler things like a lack of proper tree trimming around high tension lines.Sunspot AR2975 shot off a long duration (5 hours) M4 solar flare. Long duration flares tend to shoot out huge CMEs. Could cause another geomagnetic storm in the coming days if it doesn't miss us.
HOF, I agree with your assessments. I've seen the results of these policies in my area. There's also significant corruption in the energy industry. Given all of this, I'm sure that we're not anywhere near as ready for a large X-class event as we should be.I don't know if we'll ever be completely ready for one to be honest.Just because we have knowledge of surge protection doesn't mean they have spent the money to build in those protections where the large transformers are. Our electrical infrastructure is aging and instead of updating it, we keep putting on more load while removing the constant power sources required to maintain it. Our hydroelectric power at Lake Mead is on track to have a partial shutdown by October (only 12 feet of water left). Lake Powell is 33 feet from shutting off hydroelectric power (35 feet was the cutoff to start limiting water downstream). In the U.S., energy companies running the grid don't put their profits into improvements, they put them into their pockets. Then you have the "not in my backyard" people that prevent any new projects from being started. Then you have politicians with their own agenda. I'll leave it at that. My point is just because we know something needs to be done to avoid trouble in the future, doesn't mean it gets done.
HOF, I agree with your assessments. I've seen the results of these policies in my area. There's also significant corruption in the energy industry. Given all of this, I'm sure that we're not anywhere near as ready for a large X-class event as we should be.I don't know if we'll ever be completely ready for one to be honest.
However I'm also trying to understand the possible scope of such an event. While it could definitely affect the power grid as it's essentially a huge nationwide antenna, I can't help but wonder where the cutoff is in terms of localized damage to devices that aren't necessarily connected to the grid. I'm talking about stuff that I'd have to fix personally as opposed to power grid repairs. My first impression is that there wouldn't be a lot of localized damage (if any), and fiber optics lines would be spared completely since they're non-conductive.
If we were still in the days of dial-up modems, I might be concerned that the telco's surge protection might not be enough to protect my modem (especially if it's old and degraded). I would be less worried about today's cable systems since the co-ax is typically fed from a nearby fiber node which reduces the effective length of the co-ax acting as an antenna. Also the outer shield of the co-ax is grounded in multiple places, unlike copper telephone lines.
Those living in higher elevations like Denver might see higher occurrences of random bit-flipping in digital systems though.