Story here. Starting at 1:37 PM EDT on Sunday, April 23, 2023, Earth was impacted by a Severe Geomagnetic Storm (a level 4 of 5 on NOAA’s space weather G- scale). The most likely areas of impact extend across the northern tier of the United States (north of 45 degrees latitude) and into Canada. These impacts generally include widespread, yet manageable, irregularities to the power grid, spacecraft, global positioning systems, and radio communications. Additionally, if this storm persists into the evening, the Aurora Borealis may be seen as far south as Alabama and northern California. Currently, the Severe Geomagnetic Storm is expected to persist until 2:00 AM EDT on April 24, 2023.
On the afternoon of April 23, 2023, at 2:12 PM EDT, a Moderate Solar Flare (M1.7) erupted from the sun expelling a billion tons of superheated magnetized gas from the sun known as plasma. This ejection, known as a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME), traveled at nearly two million miles per hour and reached Earth in two days. NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center had issued a Minor Geomagnetic Storm (G1) watch for April 23, 2023, and a Moderate Geomagnetic Storm (G2) watch for April 24, 2023, with only a 5% and 30% chance of the storm reaching strong-extreme conditions on the two days. A Strong-Extreme Geomagnetic Storm Warning was issued by SWPC at 3:26 PM EDT on April 23, 2023. The Geomagnetic Storm arrived earlier and was much stronger than expected.
Is anyone on SD being impacted by this (radio communications, grid issues et.)?
Is anyone going to stay up late to watch the light show?
If so please give reports with your approximate location.
Northern VA here. I’ll be awake anyway, I’ll look outside every now and then, hope weather and light pollution doesn’t scotch my chance of seeing anything.
Interesting. I subscribe to the swpc weekly forecast and this was not expected. Not at all.
I’m way far south in FL, so no chance to see anything unless we’re into xkcd’s rather understated prediction for an end-of-civilization event. So no local impacts.
I have no doubt things are getting weird at work for the folks going over the pole today and tonight.
Glad that’s not my department; I’d rather deal with fighting volcanoes than fighting the Sun; I can tell when I’m waaay overmatched.
I’m near Olympia, Washington.
5:12 PST (00:12 UTC) and normally strong FM radio stations have a lot of static and fading. I can see the increased noise on my SDR.
Local NOAA weather radio broadcast is clear, but no information about a solar storm.
The shortwave bands are unreadable. Sundays are usually teaming with Net-Checks but I don’t see any signals on the waterfall worth chasing.
Right now FAA says their airspace at least is running normally. Implying comms aren’t too disrupted. Their airspace includes a hefty chunk of the western Atlantic from just north of the Caribbean islands all the way up to near Nova Scotia.
Northern Wisconsin here, I’ll keep an eye on the sky tonight, at least until I fall asleep later. We’re partly cloudy skies right now, so I stand a fair chance of seeing something. Here’s NOAA’s Aurora weather for tonight & tomorrow
6:48 PST (1:48 UTC)
A Net-Check from the Oregon Emergency Net (south of me) is punching through the noise level on 80 meters here. I can make out about 60% of in-state Oregon transmissions @ 3980 Mhz. Net Control is complaining about the noise level but they are logging in the transmissions that they can read.
I normally hear the BC Northern Net (to my north) at the same time, but no signal so far. Same thing with the Columbia Basin Net - Nothing.
Shortwave signals get stronger as the sun goes down and it’s civil twilight here now.
Sunset is officially 8:10 PM local today.
The sky is overcast so I doubt I’ll get to see any aurora.
Nothing out of the ordinary here, and no aurora, but it’s overcast and we’re on the fringe of the predicted visibility area anyway. No disruption to anything I was aware of, and internet speed is normal (700 Mbps). So, total non-event.
I don’t care about cloud cover now – my big concern is cloud cover during the Great North American Total Solar Eclipse of April 8 next year! For the first time ever, it will be literally right over my house, although I’m planning to drive further south to a friend’s place where the totality will be longer. With my luck, of course, it will be totally overcast. Around here this is fairly likely for early April, when weather tends to be turbulent and unpredictable.
Huh. From my little piece of the planet, this turned out to be a non-event.
The storm was rated at G4 (Severe) which is the second highest on their scale (#1 is G5 Extreme). The possible effects are listed as::
Power systems: Possible widespread voltage control problems and some protective systems will mistakenly trip out key assets from the grid.
Spacecraft operations: May experience surface charging and tracking problems, corrections may be needed for orientation problems.
Other systems: Induced pipeline currents affect preventive measures, HF radio propagation sporadic, satellite navigation degraded for hours, low-frequency radio navigation disrupted, and aurora has been seen as low as Alabama and northern California (typically 45° geomagnetic lat.).
Biological: Unavoidable radiation hazard to astronauts on EVA; passengers and crew in high-flying aircraft at high latitudes may be exposed to radiation risk.
Satellite operations: May experience memory device problems and noise on imaging systems; star-tracker problems may cause orientation problems, and solar panel efficiency can be degraded.
Other systems: Blackout of HF radio communications through the polar regions and increased navigation errors over several days are likely.
HF Radio: HF radio communication blackout on most of the sunlit side of Earth for one to two hours. HF radio contact lost during this time.
Navigation: Outages of low-frequency navigation signals cause increased error in positioning for one to two hours. Minor disruptions of satellite navigation possible on the sunlit side of Earth.
It’s currently downgraded to G3+ (Strong) and weakening.
I don’t see any news reports about any widespread impact.
I’m not complaining. It’s good that people weren’t harmed, but I think that NOAA needs to work on their messaging.
43.6 north here, in a moderately dark zone compared to most of this area, and we saw a HELL of a show last night!
No color but white, but it was wave upon wave of dancing light, moving across the sky, both rapidly and slowly, over at least a third of the sky. Bands of it crossing each other, flashing, appearing and disappearing, some remaining stable for a minute at a time, some flickering in and out in under a second.
This is only the 3rd time I’ve seen the lights at my home, and by far the most spectacular. The Mrs. and I were both enthralled.