FYI, Keep an Eye on the Sky

No northern lights in the PNW yet

 

People think Irma is strong at 185 MPH, the solar wind today is about 1,575,000 MPH. It was raining last night so no light show and everything still works, now if we can just straighten out the little fat boy... .

 

It has been an amazing week on the sun. Can't wait to see what that spot looks like when it comes back around at us. We could have had a very bad week. With Irma, fires out west and the big earthquake it's been bad enough.

 

Coming back around in about a week to face us again.

 

Solar storm will be hitting earth tomorrow. It will be a minor storm though most headlines say massive and one headline was forecasting large power outages. Those living in the Northern parts of the US may get a nice northern lights show.

Huge solar storm set to slam Earth tomorrow | Daily Mail Online

I was watching Suspisious Observer this morning. At 6:30 in the video it shows a picture of earth in scale to the sun. It always reminds me how small we really are.

 

SO states a minor disruption, as opposed to the DM's description of a huge solar storm.

Daily Mail tends to blow things out of proportion...on a regular basis. They do pick up some stories that don't make the msm, got to give them credit for that

 

I consider huge as x20 class an higher, as those tend to have potetial to cause more than just an isolated power outages in the north east.
There will only be a slight geomagnetic storm only because of preexisting interactions with the sun and earths magnetic fields and your regularly scheduled coronal hole stream.

 

Not quite a necro - but certainly on topic.

Source (Powerful Solar Storm Likely Detonated Sea Mines During Vietnam War - D-brief

Powerful Solar Storm Likely Detonated Sea Mines During Vietnam War
By Brett Carter | November 9, 2018 3:46 pm


Solar flares captured on sun. (Credit: NASA/SDO)

On Aug. 4, 1972, the crew of a U.S. Task Force 77 aircraft flying near a naval minefield in the waters off Hon La observed 20 to 25 explosions over about 30 seconds. They also witnessed an additional 25 to 30 mud spots in the waters nearby.

Destructor sea mines had been deployed here during Operation Pocket Money, a mining campaign launched in 1972 against principal North Vietnamese ports.

There was no obvious reason why the mines should have detonated. But it has now emerged the U.S. Navy soon turned its attention to extreme solar activity at the time as a probable cause.

The more we can understand the impact of such space weather on technology then the better we can be prepared for any future extreme solar activity.

A Solar Theory
As detailed in a now declassified U.S. Navy report, the event sparked an immediate investigation about the potential cause(s) of the random detonations of so many sea mines.

The sea mines deployed had a self-destruct feature. But the minimum self-destruct time on these mines was not for another 30 days, so something else was to blame.

On Aug. 15, 1972, the commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Admiral Bernard Clarey, asked about a hypothesis that solar activity could have caused the mine detonations.

Many of the mines deployed were magnetic influence sea mines that were designed to detonate when they detected changes in the magnetic field.

Solar activity was then well known to cause magnetic field changes, but it wasn’t clear whether or not the Sun could cause these unintentional detonations.

 

Solar activity 0 days are also dangerous too due to interstellar cosmic ray infiltration.