Windy Today

As this image shows, I have the solar wind in mind. According to NASA, a big solar wind is emanating from roughly the S-shaped area around 3:30 on the sun-clock. All this turbulence dates back to last Friday when an X2 magnitude solar flare made a spectacle of itself. Herewith a graphic showing it:

The chart is quite informative. If you examine the scale on the right, you will see NASA’s categorization of solar flares: A, B, C, M, and X. An X2 flare, such as that shown for last Friday, is considered a major event. It is accompanied on earth by the fading of short wave signals and strong radio bursts that interfere with satellite-to-earth communications. Note particularly that the distances between the subdivisions of each class are logarithmic rather than linear; on that scale the distance between 1 and 2 is huge!

The image of the sun is from NASA’s Solar Observatory/Atmospheric Imaging Assembly, the graph is from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center. That NOAA name always amuses me: it suggests that we are able to “administer” the oceans and the atmosphere…