No, I’m into astronomy as a hobby, very very limited hobby, and from what I understand, the end of 2009 marked the start of a new solar cycle. The sun went months without a single sunspot in 2009, and now we’ve had 5-6 strong sunspots in the past couple months. The spaceweather website is a good site to visit frequently about any space related headlines, I believe that is where this article is pulled from.
They appear however to hype activity a little too much. Probably trying to generate more web page hits. When the sun really gets mean, they wont need to hype it.
So par for the course as far as sunspots go? Elsewhere I’ve been hearing that a weaker than normal sunspot cycle may have had a hand in the ten year hiatus we’ve enjoyed from global warming.