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Level S4 solar radiation event

628 points| WorldPeas | 1 month ago |swpc.noaa.gov

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/goes-proton-flux

198 comments

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jjcm|1 month ago

If anyone is interested in what "G4" means in context, here's the scale: https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/noaa-scales-explanation

Helmut10001|1 month ago

Interestingly, there are about 100 events of this severity (G4) per cycle, and a single cycle lasts 11 years. This means there are about nine G4 events on average per year.

8bitsrule|1 month ago

G4: " Induced pipeline currents affect preventive measures, HF radio propagation sporadic..."

G5: " Pipeline currents can reach hundreds of amps, HF (high frequency) radio propagation may be impossible in many areas for one to two days..."

9dev|1 month ago

The scale seems capped at a pretty low upper end? It feels like with all the mindbogglingly huge numbers usually involved when talking about space, there must be much, much worse events possible. Is it just that we don't know enough about them due to lack of experience that these aren't included?

irthomasthomas|1 month ago

We are at kp 8.67. The Carrington event was a kp 9

xeckr|1 month ago

Looks like we get these for about 60 days for periods lasting 11 years.

non-|1 month ago

> Biological: Unavoidable radiation hazard to astronauts on EVA; passengers and crew in high-flying aircraft at high latitudes may be exposed to radiation risk.

Anyone have a sense of magnitude for this advisory? How much more radiation should an airline passenger expect to receive during a G4 event than normal?

velocity3230|1 month ago

This was an S4 event, however.

neonmagenta|1 month ago

so more of a 'bad storm here and there' level?

markonen|1 month ago

Just had my first uncorrectable memory read error on our servers in 10 years or so today (in Sacramento). I'd like to think it's related because the alternative (buying new DIMMs) is too horrifying to contemplate

buildbot|1 month ago

Last major storm I saw a significant number of single bit errors on my main server - never happened again, still using the same ram. So +1 anecdote

bartman|1 month ago

We had intense aurora in Berlin, Germany. Green clouds dancing in the sky levels. Started around 22:10 local time or a bit earlier, and at this point there's only a faint red/green glow remaining.

rob74|1 month ago

Yeah, there were auroras even as far south as Munich. Maybe not as intense, but it's the first aurora I ever saw, so I can't really judge...

madduci|1 month ago

Can confirm, I've seen pink/green glow over Berlin Sky (and pictures as well)

fluxflexer|1 month ago

Just spend an hour outsite (Northern Germany, 01:00 MET). Unfortunately nothing to report, neither visual nor on camera. Maybe I just went to late and missed the show. I hope you habe more luck in Canada and the US!

karim79|1 month ago

I was just out at a dog park and saw nothing! We have clear skies. I can't believe I missed this.

paulmist|1 month ago

Also seen in the Netherlands!

TacticalCoder|1 month ago

I tought I was seeing aurora borealis here at 4 am local time in the neighboring Grand Duchy of Luxemburg but it was just visual pollution due to lights from a city.

viscousviolin|1 month ago

Could you see it from the inner city or only closer to the edges?

marc_g|1 month ago

Oh really? Oh no I missed it! Is it going to happen again today?

miduil|1 month ago

Nice, you can already see some solar flares in Austria again.

https://www.foto-webcam.eu/webcam/kleinfleisskees/

https://www.foto-webcam.eu/

caseyohara|1 month ago

Those images around 19:00 are amazing. Thanks for sharing.

frzen|1 month ago

I had the most intensely coloured lights visible in the west of Ireland. I've seen them a few times before but never like this. Phones were capturing them in video not just long exposures.

Not sure what the best service is to be alerted ahead of time. Apparently it'll be strong here again at 6am according to some of the apps some random people were waving around.

ortusdux|1 month ago

There are several apps that do a good job of alerting users. I use "Aurora Pro", which I prefer because it checks cloud cover and lets you set alert thresholds based on viewing probability.

jesprenj|1 month ago

Our network router in our radio station started acting crazy at 22:00:40 Europe/Ljubljana time. Uptime monitoring via HTTPS reported downtime for 5 minutes, but our radio archive that records audio over LiveWire recorded some bitcrushing effects for 5 minues. Maybe our Mikrotik hEX was flipping some bits? Recording from the radio archive: https://splet.4a.si./dir/solar.mp3

justsomehnguy|1 month ago

Yes, sounds similar to a corrupted digital audio.

Replace hex with something more robust, at least with an actual metallic case.

motrm|1 month ago

Sounds like a dialup modem at about 3:30 :)

How sure are we the aliens aren't trying to dial in?

andrewinardeer|1 month ago

Any tips on best practices in how one can protect homelab rigs from a Carrington level event? Let's say we were given two days notice that the mother of all S4s was inbound. Just switch everything off?

What if one of my homelabs needed 100% uptime to meet my wife's SLA for messaging? Is this able to be protected?

amluto|1 month ago

Not much? As I understand it, the major effects are in very long wires. Long wires can have get massive induced currents. But your homelab is unlikely to have long wires or very large loops. Ethernet wires are limited to 100m, and unshielded Ethernet is transformer-isolated to well over 1kV.

Shielded Ethernet could plausibly have issues with induced current on the shield. PoE might be less immune than ordinary Ethernet depending on what you’re doing with it, although well-behaved devices should be isolated. If you have a cable ISP, the cable shield might get toasty, although it’s likely to be grounded close enough to your house that any damage will be upstream.

Your 100% uptime will be tricky if your ISP goes down or you lose power.

rootusrootus|1 month ago

AFAIK the risk is for long transmission lines. So your equipment at home is not really in any danger, as long as there is not a major surge on the transmission lines that makes it all the way to your house. If that happens, well, losing the home lab is probably no longer the issue.

tbrownaw|1 month ago

Make sure you have a surge protector or ups, in case it makes the power grid go funky. Which you should have anyway.

Also, it could be a convenient excuse to upgrade to fiber internet service if you haven't already. (Yes, excuse. Equipment should have more than good enough isolation to not care.)

Animats|1 month ago

PJM had some geomagnetic disturbance warnings, but did not progress to the alert stage or grid re-configuation actions. So, no US power grid problems.

    104955 Warning Geomagnetic Disturbance Warning 01.19.2026 14:30 
    PJM-RTO
    A Geomagnetic Disturbance Warning has been issued for
    14:30 on 01.19.2026 through 16:00 on 01.19.2026 .
    A GMD warning of K8 or greater is in effect for this period. 
    End time: 01.19.2026 16:00
(All times are prevailing Eastern US time)

I've posted on this before, for other warnings. Not going to repeat that.

drmpeg|1 month ago

Although everyone is interested in visible aurora, the proton flux is also really impressive. It peaked at 37,000 pfu at 1910Z. The highest ever recorded was 43,500 pfu in March 1991.

dschuessler|1 month ago

This page looks like an accessibility nightmare. The entire warning text is an image. There is no transcription present for screen reader users. I did not expect this from a government website.

delusional|1 month ago

Looking at the aspect ratio (and working in a bank) it's worse than that. That's a powerpoint slide.

delfinom|1 month ago

Not like someone with poor vision is going to be able to see the aurora borealis that results

/s

lukan|1 month ago

I missed it (seeing the Aurora) .. are there any reliable alerts for this sort of event, that do not alert me about anything else, but really only such big events?

vachina|1 month ago

On iOS there’s an app literally called “Aurora”.

It will notify you when you’re in an area with a high Kp (or above a Kp you specify).

albertzeyer|1 month ago

I had registered for alerts on https://aurorasaurus.org/. But that alert was sent way too late for me (strongest lights were yesterday around 10-11 PM, and the notification was sent 2 AM today). But I was very lucky and just noticed the lights by accident on my way home.

aussieguy1234|1 month ago

I'll be going out tonight if this continues into Australian night time hours.

At this strength, I could see the full display including colors with my naked eye in Melbourne, May 11th 2024. This storm is slightly stronger than that event.

ikr678|1 month ago

I'll be attempting to get some photos/footage from Esperance.

bashtoni|1 month ago

Australian Bureau of Meteorology advisory for visible aurora: https://www.sws.bom.gov.au/Aurora

aussieguy1234|1 month ago

Worth noting that Kp, which many talk about in discussions online, is more or less useless for anyone in Australia or the southern hemisphere. Lots of beginner Aurora chasers here get tripped up by that.

What is useful is KAus and the G index, KAus is shown on this page, so thats what i'll be tracking.

jp0d|1 month ago

Are there any resources to track Aurora sightings or predicted sightings?

hahahahhaah|1 month ago

Is that tonight or last night?

PlatoIsADisease|1 month ago

Years ago I was concerned about this and made a plan with my wife for what to do if she was at work.

But now we have a bunch of kids in different schools and haven't updated our plan.

Does anyone have a plan for what happens if we have a really bad event?

hnuser123456|1 month ago

A really bad event would be that long-distance transmission lines act like antennas and pick up millions of volts and blow up all the transformers.

I don't know how much you can plan for that other than "if it happens, try to get home", and then all the usual prepper stuff.

myself248|1 month ago

Pray for clear skies and go out and watch the beautiful aurora, silly!

Depending on the kids' ages, you can teach them quite a lot about the Earth's magnetic field and why the aurora concentrates at the poles, how the high-energy particles light up the sky (it's a lot like a neon light), and how the atmosphere shields us from any danger despite the spectacular show.

rootusrootus|1 month ago

For a really bad event that managed to blow a lot of transformers (presumably due to grid operators not seeing it coming) ... well, take up farming.

internet_points|1 month ago

Disconnect your telegraph batteries and run on aurora power only

fuzzer371|1 month ago

Keep a couple days water and food on hand, go up to the pub, have a pint, and wait for this all to blow over.

esskay|1 month ago

Feel a bit sensationalistic. It happens, it's not rare, and we've always got on with life perfectly fine.

Tepix|1 month ago

Buy a bit of extra food and water.

swader999|1 month ago

First rule of fight club...

WhitneyLand|1 month ago

How rare is this?

G4 storms are ~100 per solar cycle (~11 years).

So roughly 9 G4 events/year on average.

tbrownaw|1 month ago

But they should mostly be in the same part of the cycle rather than spread evenly.

It probably wouldn't make sense to calculate "average snow days per month" across an entire calendar year (in most places...), this is the same thing.

rapht|1 month ago

This is an S4. Last S4 event was in October 2003.

velocity3230|1 month ago

This is an S4, though.

burnt-resistor|1 month ago

Like 20-25 years rare according to some space weather youtuber.

jokull|1 month ago

As seen from my apartment in Reykjavík Iceland: https://ss.solberg.is/89N0qS7T

smcnally|1 month ago

That’s beautiful. But you get aurora even sans G4, true? Was this more intense and spectacular?

notfish|1 month ago

Had to stay up until 2am shutting down our spacecraft. Stupid sun hates to see me get a solid night’s sleep.

aclindsa|1 month ago

What spacecraft is your spacecraft?

markus_zhang|1 month ago

Well I didn't see anything last night (In Eastern Canada), probably because there was too much light in the suburb. Now the aurora "area" turns back to Europe and Asia, I hope you guys enjoy it!

Judging by this picture: https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/animations/ovation/nor... , I think in a few hours the whole North Europe can see it very clearly.

T0Bi|1 month ago

Your URL is broken (for me)

ComputerGuru|1 month ago

Do you need long exposure to make it visible with a camera? How does that work in the presence of light pollution?

thebruce87m|1 month ago

Tonight I could see the colours without the camera but it definitely stands out more with the long exposure of the camera.

Even with lights in the direct line of the shot you you can get good results - presumably the phone is doing HDR to achieve this.

Macha|1 month ago

Local light pollution normally makes it hard to see with anything short of long exposure, but today it was naked eye visible and regular photos also captured it.

nbf_1995|1 month ago

Title says "S4" solar radiation event, but the linked page says "G4" geomagnetic storm

cess11|1 month ago

I live somewhat close to the arctic circle and the aurora has been exceptional lately. One recent evening it looked like there was a massive city behind the cloud cover, and a few nights before when the sky was clear I watched enormous green flames for hours.

mrbluecoat|1 month ago

Verizon will probably retroactively blame their outage on it.

burnt-resistor|1 month ago

Up to G-5 possibly. Cell phone visible in dark areas throughout most of CONUS.

It was mentioned that air travel ionizing radiation exposure increases during geomagnetic storms. I'd consider pausing travel for a couple of days to not be a guinea pig because there's not enough data to consider it safe. If anyone absolutely must fly tonight, it'd be interesting if they were to take a high sensitivity dosimeter to see what happens.

garbagewoman|1 month ago

Not sure how to deal with this kind of wildly unbalanced risk assessment

wafflemaker|1 month ago

What are the best apps to get notified when there's a geomagnetic storm /chances to see Aurora? Preferably not only for USA.

_carbyau_|1 month ago

Weirdly, while the site in question is "blaring klaxons!" there are more "cool night lights!" posts than concern.

zamadatix|1 month ago

Unless you're in space, a large scale electrical operator, or relying on HF radio there isn't much reason to be interested other than the lights for a G4 (what this is currently classed as).

guerrilla|1 month ago

> while the site in question is "blaring klaxons!"

No, it isn't. It clearly says everything is under control but it would be good to keep an eye on it.

AnishLaddha|1 month ago

fascinating, hope our critical infrastructure can handle this. how long does something like this last, and will it have an effect on artemis 2?

hypothetical: if a carrington event-esque storm happens during the mission, how badly will the houston <-> orion module communication links be affected?

aliljet|1 month ago

I wonder if we're going to see an aurora over Seattle tonight?

throwway120385|1 month ago

Too much light pollution. You'd have to get well outside of the city. I looked at the weather last night and I think there might have been some trails on Tiger where you would've seen it with headlamp off.

In Seattle you can barely see planets.

cbeach|1 month ago

Probably a stupid question, but should I unplug my EV? (UK)

_blk|1 month ago

Yes! Absolutely, but only if you want to drive it.

qayxc|1 month ago

No need. Wrong type of solar event. You might be able to see auroras, though. I saw some a couple of hours ago.

uticus|1 month ago

Possible aurora visible through central US tonight

tigerlily|1 month ago

Hopefully it's clear space weather for Artemis II coming up. I wonder what they do if it's inclement en route?

perihelions|1 month ago

There's not that much they can do. It's often discussed that if the extreme August 1972 solar storm had overlapped with an Apollo mission (it didn't), it would have acutely sickened the astronauts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_1972_solar_storms#Human...

> "Had a mission been taking place during August, those inside the Apollo command module would have been shielded from 90% of the incoming radiation. However, this reduced dose could still have caused acute radiation sickness if the astronauts were located outside the protective magnetic field of Earth, which was the case for much of a lunar mission. An astronaut engaged in EVA in orbit or on a moonwalk could have experienced severe radiation poisoning, or even absorbed a potentially lethal dose."

The Orion capsule's contingency plan looks something like this:

> "To protect themselves, astronauts will position themselves in the central part of the crew module largely reserved for storing items they’ll need during flight and create a shelter using the stowage bags on board. The method protects the crew by increasing mass directly surrounding them, and therefore making a denser environment that solar particles would have to travel through, while not adding mass to the crew module itself."

https://www.nasa.gov/missions/artemis/orion/scientists-and-e...

zahlman|1 month ago

It seems that the peak was several hours ago, and I haven't observed any effects from it...

guerrilla|1 month ago

The peak was originally supposed to be 6-7 hours from now... it's still showing KP 8 here though, so I'm not sure what's going on. It could get more intense.

_blk|1 month ago

Nice. And it's somewhat relieving to read this over a Starlink connection.

JumpCrisscross|1 month ago

Any aurora luck for those of us in the Rockies? (Near Yellowstone.)

ferguess_k|1 month ago

Darn Montreal is still too south. Wish I were in Winnipeg.

brador|1 month ago

What strength would destroy the sensor?

anon115|1 month ago

any effects on the human body??

internet_points|1 month ago

Depends. If you're outside at night and tilt your head up, the Default Mode Network of your brain may be temporarily suppressed, while dopamine may increase.

sparin9|1 month ago

TL;DR: A severe (G4-level) geomagnetic storm hit Earth on January 19, 2026 due to a solar coronal mass ejection. It can disrupt power grids, GPS, satellite systems, and radio communications, while creating visible aurora displays at higher latitudes.