Overcast with scattered drizzle this Saturday here on California’s north coast — some weak, pale sunshine occasionally does temper the air, so it ain’t all bad.
Rain coming this afternoon, supposedly pretty heavy by morning and on into Sunday. Short-lived, though, as the system is expected to be gone before Tuesday.
A sort of news surprise this morning, after the fact — the sun blasted a X-type solar flare directly at earth, causing radio blackouts worldwide.
Via Discovery: ‘“The X-flare scrambled the ionosphere thoroughly so that no decametric radio signals were supported in my part of the world,” said amateur radio astronomer Thomas Ashcraft.’
(Illustration: Tessa Hunt-Woodland‘s ‘Solar Flare,’ found here).
The flare happened Wednesday and the electromagnetic radiation given off didn’t reach us until yesterday.
From World Tech Today:
A powerful solar flare that erupted on the Sun on Wednesday and reached us here on Friday was large enough to effect radio signals all over the western hemisphere.
The X-class solar flare was also captured on video by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.
Solar flares are brief, enormous eruptions from the surface of the Sun that emit large amounts of electromagnetic radiation for a period lasting from minutes to hours.
They are capable of disrupting satellite communications on Earth.
Radiations emitted during solar flares include all wavelengths across the electromagnetic spectrum, including radio, optical, UV, hard and soft X-rays, and gamma-rays.
These flares are classified by researchers according to the brightness of their X-ray wavelengths and put into three categories, C, M, and X.
…
The flare dated March 11 was classified by researchers as an X2.2-class flare (an X2 is twice as intense as an X1, an X3 is three times as intense, etc).
The flare, say the scientists who have been studying it closely, shot out from a sunspot classified as Active Region 12297, an area that had been firing off less intense flares for a few days prior to the massive, X-class eruption on Wednesday.
A flare in retrospect. Interesting how shit way, way off can have a great impact here on this tiny planet.