20 YEARS LATER, THE HALLOWEEN STORMS

[svetz]

Imagine waking up to this headline: "Half of Earth’s Satellites Lost!" Impossible? It actually happened during the Great Halloween Storms of 2003.​

Turn back the clock 20 years. Solar Cycle 23 was winding down, and space weather forecasters were talking about how quiet things would soon become. Suddenly, the sun unleashed two of the strongest solar flares of the Space Age--an X17 flare on Oct. 28 followed by an X10 on Oct 29, 2003. Both hurled fast CMEs directly toward Earth.

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[svetz]

CORRECTION--MAYBE IT *WILL* HIT EARTH: A solar magnetic filament erupted on Halloween night, carving a "canyon of fire" in the sun's southern hemisphere. Initial NASA models of the resulting CME suggested it would miss Earth. However, new NOAA models of the same CME point to a glancing blow on Nov. 4th. If so, the impact could cause a minor G1-class geomagnetic storm with high-latitude auroras.