Stormy space weather ahead

Saturday, 2 September 2023 09:55 UTC

Stormy space weather ahead

A long duration M1.2 solar flare took place around departing sunspot region 3413 yesterday which peaked around 03:52 UTC. This event launched a coronal mass ejection into space which could arrive at Earth in two days time. This would be the second coronal mass ejection that is expected to arrive at our planet in the coming days. After a very quiet August a promising start to September as darkness returns to the northern hemisphere!

The resulting coronal mass ejection from yesterday's M1.2 solar flare was fairly wide despite the bulk of the ejecta heading mostly west of our planet. We do expect an impact from this plasma cloud at our planet on 4 September, Monday which could cause minor storm conditions. This would be the second coronal mass ejection to arrive at our planet as a fainter partial halo coronal mass ejection was launched on 30 August due to a filament eruption.

While it is hard to analyze the data, this coronal mass ejection could have arrived last evening despite it was expected to arrive later today. We already had a period with minor G1 geomagnetic storm conditions and it is hard to say if this is it or we should expect an impact later today. As always keep an eye on the data as we finally have a period with more stormy space weather conditions to look forward to.

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