Strong Solar Flare! Solar Storm! Polar Cap Absorption Event!

James Kaufman, World News Report, today, April 1st, 2025. God bless you and yours, no matter where you are in the world. Please subscribe, give us a thumbs up, ring that bell for critical future updates. Happy April Fools, ladies and gentlemen. We are having some technical problems with our sound, so if it doesn't sound great, my apologies, we're working on it. We've had another large, earth-facing solar flare. This time a 5.61, generated from sunspot group AR4046. That peaked around 646 UTC time, so really it all happened last night around midnight central time here in the U.S. Since then, we've seen very little activity. Let's take a look at the sun and see what's going on. We still are in a proton and solar storm. And we still are in a polar cap absorption event. Heading over to Space Weather Live, we see that 5.61, the strongest in the last 24 hours, and the strongest in the last 72 hours. Again. This 5.61 solar flare was generated by sunspot group 4046, which is a beta gamma sunspot currently. We do have a delta sunspot on the sun. It's earth-facing, but so far, no problems out of it, 4048. Today, because of that delta sunspot, we have a 25% chance of seeing an X flare. And a 75% chance of seeing an M-class solar flare. That ship sailed. We're still maintaining a C-plus baseline solar flare. So I think that should say 100%. So we had one blast come out of the Beta Gamma sunspot. So far, 4048, the Delta-class sunspot, has left us alone. Taking a look at HMI intensitygram we see 4046 that generated our 5.61 solar flare right here and we see a much larger sunspot group here 4048 which is now a delta class sunspot that is basically earth-facing and will be for the next several days. Danger Will Robinson. We have a total of seven sunspot groups earth-facing currently. Believe it or not, we're coming out of an S2 solar storm still. We're still in a solar storm. You can see the proton flux. It indicates that we're in space weather territory here. This is causing a polar absorption event, and, well, this is no good for anybody. So scientists now believe that that very strong X-flare we had on the 28th Actually accelerated the particles around the coronal mass ejection, the protons and electrons, and we've been in an electron storm for three days as well, as you can see here. It's a crazy, crazy situation. All right, moving over to absorption prediction center. We're in a very strong polar cap absorption event. Of course, this means that we have We have energetic particles, protons and electrons. Entering Earth's atmosphere via the south and north pole here. The problem with that is we also have astronauts that are supposedly currently in a polar orbit. Hard to believe that they would actually start their mission in a situation like this. They say that there is or should be no harm to the astronauts because it is a S-1 and S-2 solar storm. I question that, but I'm not the expert. All right, this is the event. It began as a R2 moderate radio blackout, although we're in a polar absorption event, so I have no idea how they would have measured that. Again, an M5.61 peaked at 646 UTC time. Active region 4046 located in the northeast quadrant of our solar disk produced an M. 5.61 X-ray flare quickly followed by an R2 moderate radio blackout that peaked around 646 UTC time. Analysis will be accomplished as imagery becomes available to determine if an associated coronal mass ejection was produced and if any potential impacts of Earth do exist. Taking a look at LASCO C3. Three, for the day, it's very hard to determine or see any coronal mass ejection that was produced, although I would expect there would be one produced. Again, not seen here on LASCO C3, anytime near around 6, 7, 8, 9, etc. Now, even though we're technically in a solar storm, we're not in a geomagnetic storm. We have no solar winds or plasma in any large amounts striking Earth currently. You can tell by looking at all four of our KP indexes, our Boulder, our Fredericksburg, our estimated planetary, and our college indexes. They show us that we have no substantial, again, solar winds or plasma. hitting planet earth and we will verify that through discover but we are not in a geomagnetic storm we're a proton storm solar storm well we have a very high electron count and we're in a polar cap absorption event jumping over to our real-time solar winds Well first off we see that our shields are down but that doesn't matter because we have no plasma. I guess there's a peak of just over 10 which is our space weather threshold but no substantial plasma whatsoever. I think we have some stronger plasma here that's just occurred. This is up to 17 18 there for a second. So this is much more substantial. And we could see a geomagnetic storm add to the mix here when the next print is put down. Solar wind-wise started at 460. And it's hung around 460 all day long. Currently it's at 425. What was NOAA's prediction for the day? Well, they have solar winds here on the first, starting out right about where they did, 425, and shooting up almost to 600 kilometers per second. Nothing like that occurred. It might still be inbound but we really only have an hour or two until we hit the second here. Plasma wise we saw plasma hang out right about where they have it. We'll give them the benefit of the doubt here about five centimeters going down as low as about two centimeters. Not bad, although we are seeing plasma all of a sudden at 17 and 18 centimeters cubed. And let me tell you, they're decreasing their actual forecast of plasma. Well, plasma is really shooting, well, up past 10, especially with a threshold as high as 18 centimeters cubed. I believe we're going to be in an S1, a G1. And we'll have just left an R2, although we're in a polar cap absorption event. I believe we're going to be in all three of those at the same time as soon as they make the next print with all of the KP indexes. We'll be taking a look at the estimated planetary KP index for our information. So with that said, folks, we had a fairly large. M-FLARE, the 5.61, we don't know if a coronal mass ejection was generated at this time. We're currently in a polar cap absorption event. We're in a S1 solar storm pushing both protons and electrons into Earth's atmosphere. And, well, we have our first polar launch. With one of our rockets actually orbiting both poles currently, I would think that this would be terrible timing. Although I am being told that, well, this shouldn't affect our astronauts whatsoever. Solar radiation storm in progress. The four astronauts of FRAM-2 are currently flying through a solar radiation storm as energetic protons from the sun rain down on Earth. It's a Category 2 storm. It was a Category 2. It's now a Category 1 storm, which means it poses no threats to the astronauts' health. It is, however, affecting Earth. Take a look at this map. The red zones are places where shortwave radio transmissions have been blacked out, a direct result of protons striking Earth's upper atmosphere and ionizing the air between 50 kilometers and 90 kilometers above the ground. Again, this is called a polar cap absorption event. Anyone trying to use a shortwave radio inside the Arctic Circle or Antarctic We'll find that it will not work whatsoever while this storm is in progress. The cause of this storm is a bit of a mystery. NOAA analysts believe protons may have been accelerated by a big coronal mass ejection, which ended up narrowly missing Earth on March 31st. The coronal mass ejection didn't hit Earth, but it may be spraying protons or pushing protons. In Earth's direction. God bless you and yours, folks. This is a mystery. 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