1 hour ago, TawnyB said:

The Carrington event induced enough electricity into the crust to melt the transatlantic cables.  

"Tests were conducted on samples of cable submerged in seawater. When perfectly insulated, there was no problem applying thousands of volts. However, a sample with a pinprick hole "lit up like a lantern" when tested, and a large hole was burned in the insulation." -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_telegraph_cable

A cable that was manufacturered badly and would melt in any place that had even the smallest imperfection in the shielding.  It should also be noted the only transatlantic cable had failed a full year before the Carrington event.  A second transatlantic cable wouldn't start being laid down until 1866.  

Should also put out that yours is the first reference I have ever seen that the sole transatlantic cable at the time was affected by the Carrington event.   One question I would ask is how did they know?  They stopped using the cable a full year before, and I think it's still down there.  I can't imagine anyone would have paid the expense of picking it back up once it failed (again in 1858). 
 

 

Edited May 10, 20241 yr by casualseer366

24 minutes ago, MinYoongi said:

Do you guys think we'll be fine? The DST skyrocketing and stuff have me a bit jumpy. im scared we're gonna near "dangerous" situations even though all looks fine. im just scared of the length.

I'm new here, but I'm sure we'll be fine. My Mom lived in Montreal during the '89 storm, cause by a X15 flare; she and almost the whole province lost power for over 9 hours, and she survived lol. We made it through the 2003 storms as well.

14 hours ago, Philalethes said:

One of the most used estimates for the Carrington flare is the one quoted and cited here, which after recalibration would be X64 (the X45 estimate was under the previously used values). There's also a more recent estimate from last year using Carrington's own description to conclude that it was on the order of X80, but this also has its own pitfalls. In any case it was certainly extremely strong.

Ah, okay. I did think there might be newer stuff out, but that was just what I could find at the time. 

I also noticed my screenshot has been removed, despite it getting approved originally xD Edit: Nevermind, it just didn't load originally lol

Edited May 11, 20241 yr by Stephen Traynor
SS is still there, just didn't load lol

Heya, I'm new to this all. We reached a G5 around 23:30 UTC, right? The aurora is really pretty, but please calm me down, that nothing is going to happen to the internet. Currently, I have to live in a long distance relationship (for 6 months), because my partner is away for a while, and I am really concerned I will lose contact. Thank you the answers!

1 minuut geleden, LeoFiveSeven zei:

Heya, I'm new to this all. We reached a G5 around 23:30 UTC, right? The aurora is really pretty, but please calm me down, that nothing is going to happen to the internet. Currently, I have to live in a long distance relationship (for 6 months), because my partner is away for a while, and I am really concerned I will lose contact. Thank you the answers!

At 22:54 UTC yes we reached the G5 threshold, the first time in 21 years. Your internet is safe, no worries. Our server might go up in flames with all this traffic, but the internet itself is safe. 

1 minute ago, Marcel de Bont said:

At 22:54 UTC yes we reached the G5 threshold, the first time in 21 years. Your internet is safe, no worries. Our server might go up in flames with all this traffic, but the internet itself is safe. 

Thank you so much! Now we can enjoy watching the beautiful sky without fears. Have an amazing night!

9 hours ago, Christopher Shriver said:

Let's assume the narrative is that there is a problem, to begin with. Who informed you of this problem? How did you affirm that information? Do you at least somewhat understand the fundamental physics that caused concern in the past?

I'm a registered professional engineer with over 30 years of experience in a utility. I don't profess to be an expert, but it's possible that I actually do understand something about this issue. I'm not trying to be provocative, but simply informative of how the standards and practices in utilities came to be. 

Quote

You're putting a bad-faith spin on the provisions of/adherence to regulations, and driving a political wedge in where it doesn't belong here. We don't live everywhere at once, and so cannot speak in such a general case without some examples and how they represent the majority.

I don't know how you're reading that in to my text. There are many motivations at work at a utility. Some of them are diametrically opposed: for example cost versus reliability. That's life. I may work for the Feds, but I'm not a politician. I enlighten leadership as to the technical feasibility and practicalities of their concerns.

Also, I am in no way discouraging people from adhering to standards and regulations. I'm merely explaining the limits of that adherence. The standards are written as a baseline, not as an aspirational goal. Often certain subjects are left out of standards deliberately for a variety of reasons. I've been on standards committees, where we spent significant time agreeing not to add or change anything in the standard because there were multiple interacting issues that we were unable to provide guidance for. 

Many standards and regulations come about only because of a disaster of some sort. Yes, that is a morbid way of looking at it, but that's reality. And this subject is no different. Until there is an extremely expensive and deadly mess to point to, no politician is likely to authorize standards and regulations to prevent the problem. Without an actual mess to point to, the advocates sound like chicken little. So a formal design process that includes calculations and design goals to formally accommodate Carrington class flares probably won't happen right away. And perhaps the grid will in fact survive another Carrington event with minimal damage. But the reality is that we won't know until it happens because we didn't design for it. 

I'm not writing this to alarm or scare people. I am writing this to set expectations. Whether we acknowledge it or not, this is what we voted for. 

Just now, Christopher Shriver said:

I have a few sensitive electronics and live at a very high altitude(2100+ meters/7000 ft); have noticed nothing strange in that regard. This all started at noon, so I'm over here feeling like I'm missing out. Haha

you should be dark in how many hours? Dont feel bad, i missed out too. im in bad pain so i cant go out and look for aurora.

1 minute ago, Christopher Shriver said:

It's currently dusk, so I'm crossing my fingers. Can relate to pain - have had some chronic kidney stone issue for several years now.

I hope they get better 😕 

3 hours ago, MinYoongi said:

Do you guys think we'll be fine? The DST skyrocketing and stuff have me a bit jumpy. im scared we're gonna near "dangerous" situations even though all looks fine. im just scared of the length.

Inserting myself into this conversation. For the past 3 days in Mexico we had power shortages eerily coinciding with last week X4 solar flare. So far the national electricity company blames the heat wave we are currently experiencing as well, but yesterday they issued a national warning decree as we are expecting more. Could this be in some way related? I don't mean to be as someone mentioned "chicken little" but the timing  seems suspicious.

 

 

Edited May 11, 20241 yr by olive1989
Typo

15 minutes ago, olive1989 said:

Inserting myself into this conversation. For the past 3 days in Mexico we had power shortages eerily coinciding with last week X4 solar flare. So far the national electricity company blames the heat wave we are currently experiencing as well, but yesterday they issued a national warning decree as we are expecting more. Could this be in some way related? I don't mean to be as someone mentioned "chicken little" but the timing  seems suspicious.

There's hardly been any geomagnetic activity for the past 3 days before this one, and certainly nothing that would ever affect Mexico, so I'd say that's not realistic. Heat wave sounds like a way more likely explanation, high temperatures can have really bad consequences for power systems.

Customers without electricity in Finland yesterday. The GIC value peaks at exactly the same minute as the faults (purple graph). Wind was calming down through the evening and stable at night.

No it's not the end lf the world, but these amounts are very significant in a country where even the most rural places have 99.99% availability. And yes, the grid would totally get messed up without proper reaction in a Carrington event. (GIC +100V/km for longer period)

2 hours ago, Tino Lehtonen said:

Customers without electricity in Finland yesterday. The GIC value peaks at exactly the same minute as the faults (purple graph). Wind was calming down through the evening and stable at night.

No it's not the end lf the world, but these amounts are very significant in a country where even the most rural places have 99.99% availability. And yes, the grid would totally get messed up without proper reaction in a Carrington event. (GIC +100V/km for longer period)

Given the magnitude of the storm yesterday it wouldn't surprise me if there were indeed some outages at high latitudes at the peak, like in 2003, although I've yet to see many reports about it; if I'm reading the top graph right the x-axis is the hour of the day, and outages were mostly resolved within less than an hour, correct? In that case it sounds a bit similar to what happened in Sweden in 2003, although there I believe ~50,000 people lost power for an hour or so, whereas here it seems to have peaked at ~10,000, with that peak being very thin.

As for a hypothetical stronger event like a Carrington one, I don't think anyone is claiming there wouldn't be outages; transformers would definitely have to be disconnected en masse in such a situation, so power would be out one way or another, but the point is more to be able to put those transformers back online after the storm has passed rather than them being permanently destroyed, which would be a way worse situation.

4 hours ago, Tino Lehtonen said:

No it's not the end lf the world, but these amounts are very significant in a country where even the most rural places have 99.99% availability.

I didn't see anybody here say that nothing will happen, since there were outages in 1989 and 2003. It's just that it won't be the end of the world like peddlers on social media keep saying.

What to expect about this? Are we in danger?

2 minuten geleden, LeoFiveSeven zei:

What to expect about this? Are we in danger?

We've survived a G5 extreme geomagnetic storm, my electricity was still up, could still make calls, no earthquakes here and still feel great (except a shortage of sleep). 
So are we in danger? Hell no... this is normal solar activity in the years around solar max, just enjoy the nice aurora show.

2 minutes ago, Vancanneyt Sander said:

We've survived a G5 extreme geomagnetic storm, my electricity was still up, could still make calls, no earthquakes here and still feel great (except a shortage of sleep). 
So are we in danger? Hell no... this is normal solar activity in the years around solar max, just enjoy the nice aurora show.

Thank you  It seems like to be going on all weekend, and I heard it can affect the symptoms of schizophrenia, which wouldn't be too good, thats why I got a little bit curious. Hope I can see the aurora tonight again.

Im also curious about the thing,that what if we are already in the middle of the solar max.  This will be my first! I was 2 years late for the 2003 one...

On 10/30/2023 at 3:21 PM, Archmonoth said:

Great! This site has lots of good information for understanding some of those variables. 

Yes, yes it does. 

I live in Sweden and my house had several power outages yesterday but it was resolved quickly.

There was an article in Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet where they talked with a man who works with the power grid. He said that they were notified before the storm arrived and that they did lower the power in the grid to brace for the storm. Which seems to be helping as the outages were really short.

@Nathan Majors:

Quote

I’m not a doomer but is that risk low or high

As far as I know, satellites did just fine yesterday. At least I haven't heard of any reports about lost ones yet.

On 11/23/2023 at 4:23 PM, MinYoongi said:

i just wanted to say im really proud of all the answers and info + help against anxiety/fearmongering. I love our small community alot.

It's certainly a breath of fresh air for me. I'm learning a lot more than I ever had before, and getting a brand-new perspective on "space weather." 

2 minutes ago, MrEscher said:

It's certainly a breath of fresh air for me. I'm learning a lot more than I ever had before, and getting a brand-new perspective on "space weather." 

yeah this forum is a great place for that.

5 hours ago, Philalethes said:

Given the magnitude of the storm yesterday it wouldn't surprise me if there were indeed some outages at high latitudes at the peak, like in 2003, although I've yet to see many reports about it; if I'm reading the top graph right the x-axis is the hour of the day, and outages were mostly resolved within less than an hour, correct? In that case it sounds a bit similar to what happened in Sweden in 2003, although there I believe ~50,000 people lost power for an hour or so, whereas here it seems to have peaked at ~10,000, with that peak being very thin.

As for a hypothetical stronger event like a Carrington one, I don't think anyone is claiming there wouldn't be outages; transformers would definitely have to be disconnected en masse in such a situation, so power would be out one way or another, but the point is more to be able to put those transformers back online after the storm has passed rather than them being permanently destroyed, which would be a way worse situation.

The Nordics have placed a lot morr attention to GICs after 2003. There are studies from Finland of different transformer configurations and how certain ones are better than others against GICs and what kind of protective components are used. The equation is complicated but the idea simple. GICs induce DC currents into transformer coils, coils overheat. No amount of GICs or even an actual EMP for that matter would ever fry you car's electronics for example. It's all about long antennas (transmission lines) and fault currents that break large transformers and other types of large power equipment. Railroad crossings and gas pipelines can also be effected for example. A big worry is also the transatlantic fiber optics that run the internet. They are crosswired with conductors that run signal repeaters along the way.

The thing is in a catastrophical case even if the GICs are controlled by opening up circuits and closing the grid, putting everything back together takes a week at least. The power grid has to be in equillibrium all the time and full blackout back to fully working is a huge process. Seeing how well everything is handled with this storm gives hope that maybe a blackout-level storm would need an absolutely unthinkable amount of disruption.

On 5/9/2024 at 4:27 PM, arjemma said:

SpaceWeatherLive has a great Youtube video about the 2003 event: https://youtu.be/hABmdvKReNo?si=n8vffO8cCaGt9lEy

Please watch SWL's video that I linked, check the data from 2003 in the archive and then compare it to the solar eruptions and CME's we have on the way to earth now. Please don't let sensationalists get to your head. The storms 2003 did not kill technology. NOAA has NOT "made it seem" that these CME's will reach G5 and beyond or killing technology. Where have you read that, in what article?

Excellent video (especially for those new to space weather, like me, at this level of detail).

And in hindsight, this event, still going... reached G5 three times according to the NOAA site (so far). Yet, I type this on a desktop, from a state in the United States, and power has yet to flicker once.

"Could" something happen at the Sun on a scale we haven't seen yet? Sure, too many unknown variables that "could" trigger something.

How many times has that actually happened during the Industrial Age? Very few, at best (maybe none).

(Referring specifically to absolute disasters that have shut down the United States, or even one state, in the last ~120 years, while grid tech has improved as time went on).

Carrington is but one reference point, popularized by the media this thread is talking about. Probability of this happening is another thing entirely.

34 minutes ago, MrEscher said:

It's certainly a breath of fresh air for me. I'm learning a lot more than I ever had before, and getting a brand-new perspective on "space weather." 

Same feelings here!  This community is amazing!