[Kartographer]

Preparedness for such an event starts with a simple grid-down supply. Once those basics are covered and you have enough to keep your family afloat for two weeks, you could broaden your preparedness horizons with long-term food storage, emergency medical supplies, gold and silver as bartering currencies, and self defense strategies to protect against the inevitable hordes that would follow.

[Kartographer]

Prepper’s PING!!

[Rio]

http://spaceweather.com/

STORMY SPACE WEATHER: Giant sunspot AR1944 is directly facing Earth and crackling with solar flares. Yesterday, Jan. 7th, an X1-class explosion in the sunspot's magnetic canopy hurled a CME in our direction. Sky watchers shoud be alert for auroras on Jan. 9th when the cloud arrives. NOAA forecasters estimate a 60% chance of strong geomagnetic storms. Aurora alerts: text, voice.

The X1-flare that hurled the CME toward Earth also accelerated a swarm of high-energy protons in our direction. Effects of the proton fusillade are visible in this Jan. 7th coronagraph movie from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO):

The "snow" in this movie is caused by solar protons striking the spacecraft's CCD camera. A veritable blizzard of speckles develops as the CME emerges into full view. Indeed, many of the protons are accelerated by shock waves at the forefront of the expanding cloud.

This ongoing radiation storm ranks S2 on NOAA storm scales. It is rich in "hard" protons with more than 100 MeV of energy, which accounts for the snowiness of the SOHO coronagraph images. According to NOAA, "passengers and crew in high-flying aircraft at high latitudes may be exposed to elevated radiation risk" during such a storm.

The source of all this activity is AR1944, one of the biggest sunspots of the past decade. The sprawling active region is more than 200,000 km wide and contains dozens of dark cores. Its primary core, all by itself, is large enough to swallow Earth three times over. To set the scale of the behemoth, Karzaman Ahmad inserted a picture of Earth in the corner of this picture he took on Jan. 7th from the Langkawi National Observatory in Malaysia:

More flares are in the offing. The sunspot has an unstable 'beta-gamma-delta' magnetic field that is likely to erupt again today. NOAA forecasters estimate an 80% chance of M-class flares and a 50% chance of X-flares on Jan. 8th. Solar flare alerts: text, voice.

[maddog55]

Beers cold so I’m all set.

[Ghost of SVR4]

It’s an X1, while strong, it wont be bringing civilization to and end; maybe the interwebs will run slower but on the upside our magnetic field should react well; give me some global warmings pleaze!!!

[Hot Tabasco]

Preparedness for such an event starts with

I'll just do what I did with the last such massive solar flare that almost destroyed the earth... Got my chinese takeout, bottle of wine and a couple of movies that I recorded.......See ya in the morning....

[ETL]

To activate the animation, go to the link at the bottom

http://www.spaceweather.com/index.php

[chopperman]

Can someone fill me in on something? I thought that the cooler weather the last 17 years is due to less solar activity and that its predicted to continue for some time.

Isn’t this solar activity?

[mikrofon]

Here it comes ....

[KoRn]

/mark

[Tucker39]

Why does NOAA rank the as Xs, while the chart down the page ranks them with S rankings?

[Texas Fossil]

And just last month the “scientific sunspot cycle predictors” were saying we had topped the cycle and sunspot activity was moving downward.

They just don’t get it. The cycle is not a fixed length. It depends on the Sun, not some theoretical number.

Duuuhhh!

[kvanbrunt2]

Funny just three hours ago i was waxing eloquent about the global warming crap with a business associate stating that: “man influencing global worming is ridiculous compared to the fact that a solar eruption could wipe us out.” i must be a prophet. so i will continue...not!

[RansomOttawa]

The X1 flare has sent a coronal mass ejection into space, and it’s heading towards Earth.

Oh God, oh God, we're all gonna die.

[kennedy]

Bush’s fault.

[lurk]

Send in the EPA and that ol’ Sun will be at half intensity in less than 3 weeks.

[ilovesarah2012]

It’s obviously the Republicans’ fault.

[usconservative]

Crap. There goes the amateur radio bands again.