But having been in 1859 we only have estimates on what the consequences would be in the modern world. But pretty grim at the looks of it.
G5: " Pipeline currents can reach hundreds of amps, HF (high frequency) radio propagation may be impossible in many areas for one to two days..."
Now I'm feelin' so fly like a G6
Looks like G5 is the highest level and the scale system is used by NOAA.
I hear that bit in my head every time a new plane or weapon designation is announced, glad to hear it stuck with others too.
The May 2024 G5 electrical storm had a peak measured DST of −412 nT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_2024_solar_storms
The Carrington Event had an estimated peak DST of −800 nT to −1750 nT, but no one really knows: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event
I don't ever recall seeing these in the news so frequently. It feels like there are several a year now. A decade ago, never.
And I also never remember seeing Aurora at my latitudes.
Do we just have better sensing now, or is there some cycle on a period longer than a few years? Or maybe I'm crazy and just never noticed.
There was also a fairly significant geomagnetic storm back in November of 2025 as well.
You can see the data here at NOAA's Space Weather site https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/solar-cycle-progression
Anyone have a sense of magnitude for this advisory? How much more radiation should an airline passenger expect to receive during a G4 event than normal?
Funnily enough, despite having lots of alerts set up it was my mom who texted me from northern Brandenburg as she spotted it after getting an alert from RegenRadar, of all apps...
Nice to hear earth weather apps also work great in space haha. I'll keep that in mind when I set up my own notifications. Hopefully I have time to look into it before the next storm hits.
And up at the top right, left to "Latest" you can skip the time back and forth at 10 minute intervals. And then jump back like 10 images, what a beauty.
You can even see Starlink satellites https://www.foto-webcam.eu/webcam/ederplan/2026/01/19/1820
- https://www.foto-webcam.eu/webcam/ederplan/2026/01/19/2230
- https://www.foto-webcam.eu/webcam/ederplan/2026/01/19/2240
Incredible, thanks so much!
Not sure what the best service is to be alerted ahead of time. Apparently it'll be strong here again at 6am according to some of the apps some random people were waving around.
What if one of my homelabs needed 100% uptime to meet my wife's SLA for messaging? Is this able to be protected?
Shielded Ethernet could plausibly have issues with induced current on the shield. PoE might be less immune than ordinary Ethernet depending on what you’re doing with it, although well-behaved devices should be isolated. If you have a cable ISP, the cable shield might get toasty, although it’s likely to be grounded close enough to your house that any damage will be upstream.
Your 100% uptime will be tricky if your ISP goes down or you lose power.
Perhaps though you will still be able to continue to send and receive messages despite having disconnected your power supply. [1]
[1] https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uva.x001679510&seq=40...
Also, it could be a convenient excuse to upgrade to fiber internet service if you haven't already. (Yes, excuse. Equipment should have more than good enough isolation to not care.)
We didn't really understand this kind of thing when the Carrington event happened, so nobody knows for sure, but estimates for induced voltage on long conductors are usually something on the order of 20V/km. So for a 5 km long coaxial cable, you're only talking about ~120V of induced potential difference (i.e. the same voltage as a residential plug in the US). When people are analyzing the potential damage from this kind of electromagnetic disturbance (E3 is the term you'll see, based on analysis of nuclear EMP which has other components that you don't see in geomagnetic storms regardless of severity), it's mostly about really long conductors, like on the order of 100km.
Yesterday I just would have had to walk to the balkony to see it, but I was busy with some frustrating coding problem instead ..
104955 Warning Geomagnetic Disturbance Warning 01.19.2026 14:30
PJM-RTO
A Geomagnetic Disturbance Warning has been issued for
14:30 on 01.19.2026 through 16:00 on 01.19.2026 .
A GMD warning of K8 or greater is in effect for this period.
End time: 01.19.2026 16:00
I've posted on this before, for other warnings. Not going to repeat that.
/s
What is useful is KAus and the G index, KAus is shown on this page, so thats what i'll be tracking.
G4 storms are ~100 per solar cycle (~11 years).
So roughly 9 G4 events/year on average.
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.
Please stop watching that guy, he is a total fraud and knows nothing about physics.
Sooo much jargon.
Flux and bZ!
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?
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.
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.
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.
hypothetical: if a carrington event-esque storm happens during the mission, how badly will the houston <-> orion module communication links be affected?
No, it isn't. It clearly says everything is under control but it would be good to keep an eye on it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_1972_solar_storms#Human...
> "Had a mission been taking place during August, those inside the Apollo command module would have been shielded from 90% of the incoming radiation. However, this reduced dose could still have caused acute radiation sickness if the astronauts were located outside the protective magnetic field of Earth, which was the case for much of a lunar mission. An astronaut engaged in EVA in orbit or on a moonwalk could have experienced severe radiation poisoning, or even absorbed a potentially lethal dose."
The Orion capsule's contingency plan looks something like this:
> "To protect themselves, astronauts will position themselves in the central part of the crew module largely reserved for storing items they’ll need during flight and create a shelter using the stowage bags on board. The method protects the crew by increasing mass directly surrounding them, and therefore making a denser environment that solar particles would have to travel through, while not adding mass to the crew module itself."
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/artemis/orion/scientists-and-e...
My mind goes to the working mechanism of eidophor projectors, where oil on the projection bowl does indeed deform under electron beam exposure.
At this strength, I could see the full display including colors with my naked eye in Melbourne, May 11th 2024. This storm is slightly stronger than that event.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110529.html
If you manage to pull off the Aurora Australis above a triple curl at The Right with a shark body surfing into the green room ... the internet will explode.
It was mentioned that air travel ionizing radiation exposure increases during geomagnetic storms. I'd consider pausing travel for a couple of days to not be a guinea pig because there's not enough data to consider it safe. If anyone absolutely must fly tonight, it'd be interesting if they were to take a high sensitivity dosimeter to see what happens.
