Coronal hole faces Earth

Thursday, 11 October 2018 17:40 UTC

A southern hemisphere coronal hole is facing Earth. Enhanced solar wind could arrive in ~3 days. Follow live on https://t.co/bsXLid5YhH pic.twitter.com/VSMFk8tXe9

— SpaceWeatherLive (@_SpaceWeather_) October 11, 2018

We're still experiencing an enhanced solar wind regime as the solar wind speed remains close to 500km/s at the time of writing. This is due to a previous coronal hole which managed to bring us minor G1 geomagnetic storm conditions on several days. Very nice auroral displays were reported at high latitudes during multiple days and even locations like the Netherlands managed to capture some weak aurora! In the coming days we should slowly decline back to ambient solar wind conditions until the solar wind stream from today's coronal hole arrives.

The high speed solar wind stream from this coronal hole could arrive either late on Saturday or early on Sunday. Active geomagnetic conditions are possible when the solar wind stream arrives which would be a maximum Kp of 4. Geomagnetic storm conditions are not expected from this coronal hole.