Overcast-gray this Tuesday morning on California’s north coast as we encounter another day in the life — supposedly either ‘mostly sunny,’ or ‘partly cloudy,’ depending upon which jaundiced eye is on the sky, and the time of day.

Although we ‘down’ here won’t get the visual, but this from the NOAA this morning: ‘The geomagnetic storm that began on 22 June has reached G4 (Severe) levels once again as of 0513 UTC (0113 EDT) on 23 June. Solar wind conditions remain highly favorable for continued Strong Geomagnetic storming, with both fast solar wind and strong magnetic fields. Aurora watchers in North America, especially northern tier states of the US, should stay alert.’

(Illustration: Tessa Hunt-Woodland‘s ‘Solar Flare,’ found here).

In a nutshell, via Slate: ‘On Sunday, the summer solstice, a major explosion on the sun propelled a coronal mass ejection toward Earth at about 4 million miles per hour. It then swept up two smaller, slower coronal mass ejections from last week, creating one big smorgasbord of geomagnetic exuberance. The whole mess reached Earth on Monday afternoon with a bit more energy than expected.’

All of which disrupted/blacked-out some HF (high frequency) radio communications, but mostly it was thinly science.
And some possible drama:

In the last 24 hours, solar activity peaked at ‘G4’ on the geomagnetic space weather scale provided by NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Centre, which has the potential to knock out navigation satellites for a period of hours, as well as cause other satellites to temporarily malfunction.
A G4 geomagnetic storm also has the potential for “possible widespread voltage control problems” for power grids on the ground.

Keep up with the solar-flare shit at NOAA’s space-weather homepage — kool with a ‘K’…