Coronal hole faces Earth

Saturday, 17 December 2016 16:13 UTC

A coronal hole is facing Earth. Enhanced solar wind could arrive in ~3 days - Follow live on https://t.co/T1Jkf6i4Cb pic.twitter.com/boF6A7FllE

— SpaceWeatherLive (@_SpaceWeather_) 16 december 2016

Compared to the last rotation, we see that the coronal hole did not change all that much but the equatorial part and the part that is just south of the equator that is facing Earth now does look a little bit bigger than it was during the last rotation. You could actually say that these are two seperate coronal holes as the two areas are hardly connected anymore but for now we will refer to this solar feature as one coronal hole.

We should start to feel the effects of this coronal hole in about 24 to 48 hours from now and the stream could increase in strength in about 3 days as the equatorial part that should be more geoeffective faces us today. Storming up to the minor G1 geomagnetic storm level is possible next week once the solar wind stream arrives.