A coronal mass ejection (CME) that erupted on March 15, 2013, hit Earth’s magnetic field at 06:00 UTC on March 17, 2013. The solar wind speed reached 700 km/s and sparked a moderately strong G2 (Kp=6) geomagnetic storm and minor S1 solar radiation storm. NOAA/SWPC reported the geomagnetic field has been at quiet to unsettled levels for the past 24 hours.
For those of you, who don’t fully understand the data given above, here are few explanations to help you better understand space weather and geomagnetic storms. Here is a short help on understanding the basic terms, data, plots and graphs.
Did you feel the heat and the effects of a tremendous solar flare Friday? As we now know the human race does experience all kinds of symptoms ranging from feelings of euphoria to aggressiveness during solar events, and this one today was a real douzy!
Hitting planet Earth at approximately 7 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT) and registered as a class X1.1 solar flare — one of the strongest types of solar flares possible, according to the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) run by NOAA and the National Weather Service, it was one of several more to come this week, after an intense week of activity.
Today's fiery solar storm erupted from the giant sunspot AR1515, and space weather scientists were closely watching the sunspot for possible X-class flares. According to the Smithsonian website:
