[HN Gopher] M8.2 solar flare, Strong G4 geomagnetic storm watch
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M8.2 solar flare, Strong G4 geomagnetic storm watch
Author : sva_
Score : 149 points
Date : 2025-06-01 16:43 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.spaceweatherlive.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.spaceweatherlive.com)
| mobbin wrote:
| I know absolutely nothing about solar weather beyond aurora
| visuals being a possible outcome depending on where you live. I
| missed the last chance to see at my latitude (rare) and don't
| want to miss again.
|
| What could I subscribe to so as to be notified when such events
| happen?
| pyrophoenix wrote:
| It means between an hour and 9 hours from now, we might have a
| Aurora down to Berlin level at 100%. Now the weather is not the
| best. More information in 2 hours.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| Note that this was published yesterday. The geomagnetic storm
| is underway right now.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| For the UK there's https://t.me/aurorawatchuk on Telegram but I
| guess solar weather is globally applicable.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/alerts-watches-and-warnin...
|
| https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/communities/space-weather-enthusia...
|
| https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/content/subscription-services
| n3uromancer wrote:
| https://x.com/JAtanackov/
| lucasban wrote:
| I've been using the "My Aurora Forecast & Alerts" app, which is
| pretty good. I'm using the pro version, but I think the main
| difference was removing some ads.
| mikeocool wrote:
| The Aurora app on iOS can set to send a critical notification
| when you're likely to see it in your location.
|
| It alerted me (in New York) this morning at about 4AM -- though
| I slept through it.
| qwertox wrote:
| M8.2 is in the upper medium range (M = M1.0 to M9.9). Next comes
| X1 which is 10 times stronger than M10. M2 is 10 times stronger
| than M1.
|
| We might see several of these per year during a solar maximum. So
| maybe we get some nice auroras.
|
| Edit, TIL: Though the G4 is a different issue, which classifies
| the impact of a solar flare on our earth. These range from G1
| (minor) to G5 (extreme). This means that it can disrupt radio
| communications and GPS, put stress on power grids and,
| interestingly, increase satellite drag. G4 storms are rare events
| and occur only a few times per 11-year solar cycle.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > interestingly, increase satellite drag.
|
| was reading something about this last week. originally, I
| assumed that the satellite electronics were getting whacked,
| but that wasn't the actual reason. these storms can heat the
| atmosphere causing it to expand/swell during the heating which
| causes extra drag requiring faster than anticipated use of fuel
| for station keeping.
|
| just another one of those issues of just how everything in the
| universe "works together" in the most interesting ways.
| perihelions wrote:
| A while back an entire Starlink launch was lost due to this
| atmospheric inflation,
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30267587 ( _" Starlink
| lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm (spacex.com)"_, 495
| comments)
| nozzlegear wrote:
| > G4 storms are rare events and occur only a few times per
| 11-year solar cycle.
|
| Did you mean G5 storms? If I'm reading NOAA correctly, we get
| about 100 _G4_ storms per cycle, but only 4 _G5_ storms per
| cycle.
|
| https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/noaa-scales-explanation
| OskarS wrote:
| I've read there was a huge solar flare in the 19th century that
| knocked out telegraph equipment all over the world. Do we know
| how strong that event was on that scale?
| sva_ wrote:
| You're probably referring to the Carrington Event
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event
|
| The instruments to measure the strength of solar flares
| didn't exist, but I think it's estimated between X40 to X50.
|
| For comparison, last may the strongest flare was X8.7
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_2024_solar_storms
| transcriptase wrote:
| Hams: How's the RF propagation with this one?
| geerlingguy wrote:
| My favorite site for tracking the metrics is
| https://solarham.com/
| geoffeg wrote:
| https://solar.w5mmw.net/ is also nice for a quick overview.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| NOAA's gotchu covered!
|
| https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/communities/radio-communications
| kapnap wrote:
| Good luck to any directional drillers out there trying to drill
| your well blind.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| ?
| _Microft wrote:
| If I had to guess, I would say that Earth's magnetic field is
| used in directional drilling to tell which way your drill
| head is going and that the solar storm distorts Earth's
| magnetic field.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Wonder why they don't use gyros. Too much vibration?
| _Microft wrote:
| They might be - this was only an attempt to make sense of
| the first comment in the context of this submission.
| WJW wrote:
| It's a reference to the "Armageddon" movie from 1998 when a
| bunch of oil rig drillers get recruited into being astronauts
| for plot reasons. It was a decent enough movie but nothing
| you need to look up unless you have an unhealthy obsession
| for Arwen from Lord Of The Rings.
| yread wrote:
| You can kinda follow news about it on
|
| https://community.spaceweatherlive.com/topic/3947-ar14100-m8...
|
| Although it often sounds like people throwing fancy words around
| just to sound smart. And their predictions mostly dont work out
| petee wrote:
| NOAA Experimental Aurora Viewline prediction for tonight/tomorrow
| night -- https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/aurora-viewline-
| tonight-a...
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| if I read all the websites correctly... it has already ended??
|
| ---
|
| NOAA map (https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/aurora-30-minute-
| forecast) shows huge auroras were at ~7-9 UTC and now are gone
|
| https://solarham.com/ says "arrived faster than expected" and
| "threshold was reached at 08:00 UTC"
|
| and the website linked, the
| https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/.html says "14:00 UTC -
| Geomagnetic activity Severe G4 geomagnetic storm (Kp8)" followed
| by "17:30 UTC - Geomagnetic activity Minor G1 geomagnetic storm"
| sva_ wrote:
| NOAA: "CME Passage Continues; G3-G4 Still Possible Tonight,
| June 1st"
|
| https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/news/cme-passage-continues-g3-g4-s...
| sva_ wrote:
| > CME Passage Continues; G3-G4 Still Possible Tonight, June 1st
|
| https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/news/cme-passage-continues-g3-g4-s...
| Animats wrote:
| PJM issued a geomagnetic disturbance warning, then an action. No
| emergency actions, and it's already over. Msg
| ID: 104606 Message Type: Geomagnetic Disturbance
| Action Priority: Action Effective Start
| Time: 06.01.2025 09:31 Effective End Time: 06.01.2025
| 12:25 Regions COMED A Geomagnetic
| Disturbance Action has been issued as of 09:31 on 06.01.2025 to
| protect the power system from damage or disruptions due
| to increased geomagnetic activity.
|
| Times are "Eastern Prevailing Time", which is Eastern Daylight
| Time right now.
|
| Background:
|
| These messages are from the US east coast power grid control room
| in Valley Forge, PA sending to people at generating stations and
| other key control centers. This is a slow-moving event. If the
| grid was stressed, there would be "Pre-Emergency Load Reduction"
| and "Conservative Operation" actions ordered. If there was real
| trouble, there would be many more actions. But things never got
| beyond preparing for trouble.
|
| A geomagnetic disturbance event in 1989 caused transformer damage
| leading to outages. The solar flux going between power lines and
| conductive ground induces DC currents into the ground and lines,
| so that ground potential is different at different points. This
| causes partial saturation of transformers, and heating. That
| wasn't noticed until it was too late. So now, DC current in some
| key AC lines is monitored continuously, so power levels can be
| reduced if necessary.
|
| Training materials for understanding this:[1] Start at slide 21.
|
| Background info on how a power grid works.[2] Start with "PJM
| 101"
|
| [1] https://pjm.adobeconnect.com/p63ultsdb2v/
|
| [2] https://www.pjm.com/training/training-resources
| zrm wrote:
| > https://pjm.adobeconnect.com/p63ultsdb2v/
|
| Apparently my browser does not support some content in the file
| I'm trying to view and I'm instructed to use, among other
| things, "Firefox undefined or later". Which may or may not be
| what I was trying to use to begin with.
|
| Though it seems to work anyway, so okay then.
| Animats wrote:
| That PJM training material uses some ancient Adobe product.
| Works fine, though.
| hinkley wrote:
| My brain tried twice to turn this title into the name of a new
| nvram device.
| volemo wrote:
| _Hey, m8, it's a big solar flare!_
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(page generated 2025-06-01 23:00 UTC)