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Posted by WorldPeas 1 day ago

Level S4 solar radiation event(www.swpc.noaa.gov)
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/goes-proton-flux
592 points | 195 commentspage 3
johng 2 hours ago|
These solar events can cause loss of communication with satellites making avoidance maneuvers hard or impossible. This article just came out recently and is definitely scary: https://www.universetoday.com/articles/28-days-to-disaster-w...
PlatoIsADisease 1 day ago||
Years ago I was concerned about this and made a plan with my wife for what to do if she was at work.

But now we have a bunch of kids in different schools and haven't updated our plan.

Does anyone have a plan for what happens if we have a really bad event?

hnuser123456 1 day ago||
A really bad event would be that long-distance transmission lines act like antennas and pick up millions of volts and blow up all the transformers.

I don't know how much you can plan for that other than "if it happens, try to get home", and then all the usual prepper stuff.

myself248 1 day ago|||
Pray for clear skies and go out and watch the beautiful aurora, silly!

Depending on the kids' ages, you can teach them quite a lot about the Earth's magnetic field and why the aurora concentrates at the poles, how the high-energy particles light up the sky (it's a lot like a neon light), and how the atmosphere shields us from any danger despite the spectacular show.

rootusrootus 1 day ago|||
For a really bad event that managed to blow a lot of transformers (presumably due to grid operators not seeing it coming) ... well, take up farming.
internet_points 15 hours ago|||
Disconnect your telegraph batteries and run on aurora power only
esskay 15 hours ago|||
Feel a bit sensationalistic. It happens, it's not rare, and we've always got on with life perfectly fine.
Tepix 1 day ago|||
Buy a bit of extra food and water.
y1n0 1 day ago||
And toilet paper! Rolls and rolls of toilet paper!
fuzzer371 1 day ago|||
Keep a couple days water and food on hand, go up to the pub, have a pint, and wait for this all to blow over.
JoshTriplett 1 day ago||
With how much modern cars rely on electronics, I would not try to drive during such an event.
whyleyc 1 day ago|||
It’s ok - The Winchester is within walking distance.
jrgd 23 hours ago||
Omg i watched this yesterday!
lxgr 1 day ago||||
Solar flares are only dangerous to very long conductors.
luxuryballs 1 day ago||
so cancel the limo?
throwaway81523 23 hours ago||||
That's a safety feature. It prevents you from drinking and driving if you go to a pub during a solar flare. :)
jrgd 23 hours ago|||
No one would drive to the pub anyway. Better walking back home…
JoshTriplett 23 hours ago||
Valid. I think I have such an ingrained different set of assumptions (a pub being just another kind of place for food, and "going to" anything involving a form of transportation) that that didn't even occur to me.
swader999 1 day ago||
First rule of fight club...
WhitneyLand 1 day ago||
How rare is this?

G4 storms are ~100 per solar cycle (~11 years).

So roughly 9 G4 events/year on average.

tbrownaw 21 hours ago||
But they should mostly be in the same part of the cycle rather than spread evenly.

It probably wouldn't make sense to calculate "average snow days per month" across an entire calendar year (in most places...), this is the same thing.

rapht 12 hours ago|||
This is an S4. Last S4 event was in October 2003.
velocity3230 16 hours ago|||
This is an S4, though.
velocity3230 16 hours ago||
Belay that. The G-value was high too.
burnt-resistor 23 hours ago||
Like 20-25 years rare according to some space weather youtuber.
creatonez 19 hours ago||
> some space weather youtuber

Please stop watching that guy, he is a total fraud and knows nothing about physics.

mrbluecoat 9 hours ago||
Verizon will probably retroactively blame their outage on it.
lgats 22 hours ago||
https://www.ieso.ca/Sector-Participants/RSS-Feeds/Day-0-Advi...

https://www.misoenergy.org/markets-and-operations/notificati...

https://www.ercot.com/services/comm/mkt_notices/notices

https://emergencyprocedures.pjm.com/ep/pages/dashboard.jsf

nbf_1995 23 hours ago||
Title says "S4" solar radiation event, but the linked page says "G4" geomagnetic storm
ComputerGuru 1 day ago||
Do you need long exposure to make it visible with a camera? How does that work in the presence of light pollution?
thebruce87m 1 day ago||
Tonight I could see the colours without the camera but it definitely stands out more with the long exposure of the camera.

Even with lights in the direct line of the shot you you can get good results - presumably the phone is doing HDR to achieve this.

ComputerGuru 12 minutes ago||
I tried it last night (generally cloudless sky). With the naked eye it just looked like light pollution. With long exposure it looked like a weirdly lit picture. In neither case did I see any hint of green or red.

I’m not in the city, but you’d have to actually be two states away to escape its light (literally not figuratively, according to dark sky maps).

:(

Macha 1 day ago||
Local light pollution normally makes it hard to see with anything short of long exposure, but today it was naked eye visible and regular photos also captured it.
AnishLaddha 20 hours ago||
fascinating, hope our critical infrastructure can handle this. how long does something like this last, and will it have an effect on artemis 2?

hypothetical: if a carrington event-esque storm happens during the mission, how badly will the houston <-> orion module communication links be affected?

_carbyau_ 1 day ago||
Weirdly, while the site in question is "blaring klaxons!" there are more "cool night lights!" posts than concern.
zamadatix 1 day ago||
Unless you're in space, a large scale electrical operator, or relying on HF radio there isn't much reason to be interested other than the lights for a G4 (what this is currently classed as).
pvab3 21 hours ago||
my Telecaster sure was noisy this morning but I didn't think much of it
guerrilla 1 day ago|||
> while the site in question is "blaring klaxons!"

No, it isn't. It clearly says everything is under control but it would be good to keep an eye on it.

rzzzt 1 day ago||
Blaring Klaxons! https://youtu.be/LX2KX0OaofI
JoeDaDude 23 hours ago|
There is a video update from the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center. (I could only find this on Facebook) https://www.facebook.com/reel/1190509063198524
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