This isn’t any ordinary storm alert, so put down your umbrella. Following two recent coronal mass ejections ? bursts of solar wind and radiation that erupt from the sun ? a geomagnetic solar storm is headed this way, and will strike Earth late Friday night and Saturday, the National Weather Service says.
And instead of sunscreen lotion and sunglasses, you might want to stock up on batteries, instead. The radiation can affect power sources, such as the long electricity transmission lines used in North America, whose transformers can be overheated ? even blown out ? by the geomagnetics distributed in solar storms. ?In fact, the last time an event came this way in 1989, Quebec was left without electricity for nine hours after the storm injected additional electrical currents in the Canadian province’s already-high voltage lines.
The storm can also knock satellites off-course, changing their orbital patterns, even damaging them from the high radiation discharged in solar storms. As a result, many radio and television broadcasts as well as telephone communications could be interrupted. Navigation systems like GPS can be thrown off, giving inaccurate readings; commercial flights could be affected because ground-to-air communications can be disturbed by the storm, too.
Even ordinary tasks can be interrupted. As Tom Bogdan, director of the Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado, said in a 2010 interview on the subject:
?When you go into a gas station and put your credit card in and get some gas, that’s a satellite transaction.?
These effects would be pale in comparison to the magnitude of problems a solar storm could possibly create, though. A 2008 study by the National Academy of Sciences says a major solar storm could knock power out in many countries for months, and cause over $2 trillion in damages in the U.S.
This current solar storm isn’t expected to be that bad, though, although the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center says it did alert FEMA just in case. Kids might have to enjoy ordinary outdoor activities instead of online interactive games, and the northern part of the United States would be most at risk to power outages. Just make sure you have fresh batteries to power flashlights, and cash to make purchases instead of debit and credit cards.
There’s even a pleasant bonus to the solar storm, too. The Northern Lights could extend beyond the auroral zone of the far north, the Space Weather Prediction Center says, and could be visible tonight in the northern U.S. outside of major cities.
Tell us how you’re ready for the solar storm?on?Liberal America’s Facebook page. Sign up for our?free daily newsletter?to receive more great stories like this one.
