Coronal hole faces Earth

Monday, 18 November 2019 20:12 UTC

A northern hemisphere coronal hole is facing Earth. Enhanced solar wind could arrive in ~3 days - Follow live on https://t.co/bsXLidnzGh pic.twitter.com/jPGqoZ1J6f

— SpaceWeatherLive (@_SpaceWeather_) November 18, 2019

...but in all honesty... the good news ends there. If you take a look at the coronal hole today (as seen by SDO in the tweet above) and compare it with how it looked like during the previous rotation we have to conclude it has drastically diminished in size during the past few weeks. Based on the limited data that we have available from STEREO Ahead and the way this coronal hole developed, it seems much less likely that we will see similar geomagnetic storm conditions this time around. As a matter of fact, even active geomagnetic conditions (Kp4) seem a stretch at this time but we give this coronal hole the benefit of the doubt as it has always been a reliable source of geomagnetic activity. A Co-rotating Interaction Region (CIR) ahead of the high speed stream will likely arrive on Wednesday (20 November) and might spark some high latitude aurora. Geomagnetic storming does not seem likely this time around but we hope to be surprised!