Aurora Brief Volume 3, Number 4 of 7
Other Briefs: Previous Brief — Next Brief

One the Sun

Flaring activity decreased markedly. Active region 2443 which created the large M3.7 flare yesterday lost delta spots, it’s now classified beta, and decreased in size. It only produced a single B-class flare. It’s seems to be a pattern recently that flaring activity slowly increases until there is a flare that releases a larger than pattern amount of energy then the source region settles. It is likely that there will be limited flaring activity for the next three days.

On Earth

We are awaiting the arrival of the CME from yesterday’s M-class flare. SWPC has extended the G1 watch into Sunday. Forecasters are predicting a 12 hours window of potential G1 storming starting in the last 6 hours of the Saturday period. For Europe, that’s a start time of just before midnight, for those in N. America, the storm could already be rolling as the Sun sets.

Initial indications are also that this is a slow moving CME, so it may be a little later than forecast. Case in point, the porton levels measured at ACE have not started increasing yet. In a typical Earth-directed CME, we’d see the readings rising by now. Keep an eye on this data as it is the first the next sign that a solar storm is headed towards Earth. Here is a link to the source of the 3-day EPAM image.

Happy Hunting!