Earth avoids solar storm damage, so far

One of the strongest solar storms in years engulfed Earth early yesterday but scientists say the planet may have lucked out.

Hours after the storm arrived, officials said there were no reports of problems with power grids, GPS, satellites or other technologies that are often disrupted by solar storms.

But that still can change as the storm shakes the planet’s magnetic field in ways that could disrupt technology but also spread colourful northern lights.

Early indications show that it is about 10 times stronger than the normal solar wind that hits Earth.

The storm started with a massive solar flare Tuesday evening and grew as it raced outward from the sun, expanding like a giant soap bubble, scientists said. The charged particles were expected to hit at 6.5 million km/h. The storm struck the Earth at about noon Irish time. But it impacted in a direction that causes the least amount of problems, said Joe Kunches, a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center.

“It’s not a terribly strong event. It’s a very interesting event,” he said.

Forecasters can predict the speed a solar storm travels and its strength, but the north-south orientation is the wild card. And this time, Earth got dealt a good card with a northern orientation, which is “pretty benign,” Kunches said.

If it had been southern, that would have caused the most damaging technological disruption and biggest auroras.

“We’re not out of the woods,” Kunches said. “It was a good start. If I’m a power grid, I’m really happy so far.”

But that storm orientation can and is changing, he said. “It could flip-flop and we could end up with the strength of the storm still to come,” Kunches said from the NOAA forecast centre in Colorado.

A massive cloud of charged particles can disrupt utility grids, airline flights, satellite networks and GPS services, especially in northern areas. But the same blast can also paint colourful auroras farther from the poles than normal.

Astronomers say the sun has been relatively quiet for some time. And this storm, while strong, may seem fiercer because Earth has been lulled by several years of weak solar activity.

The storm is part of the sun’s normal 11-year cycle, which is supposed to reach a peak next year. Solar storms don’t harm people, but they do disrupt technology. And during the last peak around 2002, experts learned that GPS was vulnerable to solar outbursts.