Earth Facing Solar Flare & Ongoing Geomagnetic Storm January 17th 2026!

James Kaufman, World News Report, today. Ladies and gentlemen, we have been hit by a sizable solar flare and associated coronal mass ejection, or will be hit by coronal mass ejection, within a few days. We have been hit by the x-rays, etc. But before we get to that, let's go over what's currently happening. Earth is still being pounded by the Earth-facing coronal hole. It's a huge coronal hole. and looking at the estimated planetary Kp index a measurement of solar winds and plasma from ground level we start the day off with a very strong G1 geomagnetic storm and since then we've had nine hours of a geomagnetic disturbance now if we look at a more elevated Kp index it shows that we've actually had 12 hours of a G1 and G2 geomagnetic disturbance. We're getting nothing on the Fredericksburg Index. It's always, always going to be your weakest, if you notice. And our Boulder Kp Index, I believe, is located right near our estimated planetary index. They're very much similar at all times, starting the day off in the G1 geomagnetic storm, followed by six hours of a disturbance and then ending, well, the last three hours with another geomagnetic disturbance. So we always want to use the estimated planetary Kp index when we can. We'll go with three hours of a geomagnetic storm. That's really combined with three hours before that, but technically that was yesterday. And we've had nine hours of a geomagnetic disturbance. All right, we've had an M2.2 solar flare, and that peaked around 1030. We'll get an exact time on that in just a moment. Everyone's thinking, oh, that's not very strong. Well, it is based on what the C solar flares did to Earth because of our atmosphere depletion and the holes in our atmosphere, i.e. one of them, the Atlantic anomaly. It stretches all the way from the tip of South Africa across the Atlantic and covers most of South America now. This is getting very sketchy. Heading over to Space Weather Live. We have that 2.17, really a 2.2 solar flare. It peaked at 1029, 1030 is our guess. We were close. Very short-term flare, 13 minutes. came from sunspot 4341 that was a beta gamma sunspot at the time it is now a delta class sunspot that will be earth facing directly earth facing for the next three to five days right as the triple superior conjunction occurs not a good situation and probably why they got the astronauts out of the space station. We only had a 5% chance of having an X-class solar flare today. That's probably risen because 4341 is now a Delta-class sunspot. We have a 55% chance of having an M-class solar flare. Well, that's now 100% chance, and we've been running a healthy sea line current value c 1.18 so let's move on folks no substantial flares besides that one today but that did morph into a delta sunspot as you will now see over to HMI and tensogram well we see that we have a total of eight earth-facing sunspots looks like we have more coming around the limb here most importantly we have 4343 a beta gamma sunspot group facing earth some of these look like they're becoming complex and then we have 4341 that is now a delta class sunspot group you can tell because of it being written in red it could show you the sunspot group we're not going to take the time to do that and we have excuse me we have six simple sunspots although they look like they're becoming more complex as well and probably will when all the planets align in about 40 hours heading over to GOES 19 solar ultraviolet imager 195 angstroms well we see that large coronal hole still earth facing it's going nowhere soon and then at 2 30 we see our delta class sunspot AR 4341 pop off what's only a C 4.7 solar flare now we're going to move into where the actual larger explosion occurs and that is the beginning of it right there at 4:10 30 excuse me you can see that explosion that's the M 2.2 believe it or not that little explosion We've lifted a large coronal mass ejection, a halo ejection, off the surface of our star. And we'll show you that next. All right, our triple superior conjunction coming up. And look at that halo explosion coming off our sun there. You can see the time of the explosion is pretty much missing. but obviously that is from that explosion now yes most of it went off in another direction but since it is a halo eruption a halo coronal mass ejection there's a hundred percent chance that it will be earth effective and it will strike earth probably in about 40 to 45 hours that's going to right when the fun starts i expect this coronal hole to continue to well push solar winds high speed solar winds at earth for well at least another 24 hours based on where it's situated currently what is causing that geomagnetic storm well it's solar winds above 700 kilometers per second as you can see currently they've been as high as 753 just recently uh it says here it only takes 38 minutes for these solar winds to travel the 1 million miles well this DISCOVER satellite orbits 1 million miles above earth and 35 minutes from ACE unbelievable unbelievable DISCOVER or ACE 35 to 39 minutes to get here so we're looking at what's about to happen and what we have here is a spike occurring so we're going to stay in a geomagnetic storm here i.e. the 750 when the next drops and just to prove to you guys that there is no coronal mass ejection hitting earth at this time it's just solar winds from the coronal hole plasma or coronal mass ejections are caused by what filament eruptions or solar flares and we've got density at 0.31 centimeters cubed The high of the day was 2 centimeters cubed, 2.2. So there's no plasma, no coronal mass ejection hitting Earth whatsoever. This entire geomagnetic storm has to do with the solar winds that we just looked at. And this is more bad news. Our BC is south here. And you can see that next shooter drop is going to be a geomagnetic storm. uh perhaps a disturbance but i'm almost positive it's going to be a geomagnetic storm based on this bz pointing south so we're in trouble for several more hours here it is right up three o'clock central here in the u.s expect this to be ongoing the rest of the evening i.e from the coronal hole all right and just a quick look at the backside of our sun we have four sunspot groups all coming around and they're very close to coming around i.e. this was taken a day and a half ago so this stuff is moving around we should have three more named sunspot groups within 24 hours maybe 48 hours and then we have the big orange sunspot group that will probably end up being several sunspots and also 009 the big green sunspot coming around you can actually see those two here on the composite maps i hope that those don't get around during the superior triple conjunction but time will tell so what's the news ladies and gentlemen the news is the solar flare right there see if i can't catch it right there and really that wasn't a very good job and we're currently in a geomagnetic storm please give us a thumbs up share uh and subscribe if you have not and remember that anything's possible in bizarro world god bless you all it's about to get hectic these sunspots i'll tell you coming around they're about to be named they look very busy