VI. Geomagnetic Activity Probabilities 14 Sep-16 Sep
A. Middle Latitudes
Active 30/10/30
Minor storm 20/20/15
Major-severe storm 10/**70**/05
B. High Latitudes
Active 35/10/30
Minor storm 20/20/20
Major-severe storm 15/**70**/10
Yes, it can disrupt radio communications but don’t expect to fall out of the sky or anything like that - there is both redundancy and some robustness in aviation communications. It’s not like the airlines haven’t had to deal with this before. Transmissions get a load of static, that’s about it.
And, don’t forget - it’s not the radios that hold up the airplane, it’s the wings and engines, neither of which are suspectible to the effects of CME’s and geomagnetic storms.
In other words, you’ll be fine, don’t worry about it.
In case anyone couldn’t tell, Shagnasty was joking. It really is “coronal mass ejection”.
Antigen, the Northern Lights can be anywhere in the sky. Most often, they’re close to the horizon, but they can be directly overhead, or even a bit south of the zenith, and I once saw an aurora which literally filled the entire sky. But your best bet is near the horizon to the north. And you don’t want right after sunset, since there will still be a fair bit of twilight in the sky for a couple of hours or so. Best to look at around midnight.
Incidentally, this particular bout of activity has the solar physicists very excited. This was the fifth-brightest X-flare ever observed, even despite it actually being a bit around the limb of the Sun (that is to say, it was just barely on the far side), so you know it was a big one… But the region of the Sun it came from gave no prior indication of any activity at all, and there shouldn’t be much activity anywhere on the Sun right now, since we ought to be at solar minimum now.
