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I think you are on to something, Brian….. Read this story!

http://www.startribune.com/stories/789/4173071.html

Jon J.

The above link may not work…here is the story from the Startribune.com

Sunspots could disrupt satellites, power grid today

Staff and wire reports

Published October 24, 2003 SOLA25

Electric utilities in Minnesota and across the country are preparing for potential disruptions in electric supplies this afternoon, when a strong geomagnetic solar storm is expected to hit Earth.

The storm was expected to be most severe Friday, though experts said they didn’t anticipate problems with communication networks.

“This is not a super solar storm,” said Larry Combs, a space weather forecaster with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Environment Center in Boulder.

So far, the storm has interfered with airline communications and radio communications for teams on Mount Everest, Combs said. But problems were not widespread.

Sun as seen from spaceThe storm, called a “coronal mass ejection,” is a mass of solar gas that swept toward Earth at 2 million mph. The usual cycle for such a storm is every 11 years; this one was expected to hit three years ago.

“It is kind of like a snowstorm in June in Colorado,” Combs said.

Combs said power companies, which are among the center’s best customers, have been notified and were taking precautions to avoid voltage problems and blackouts.

Xcel Energy spokesman Paul Adelmann said the company is monitoring the situation, with help from the North American Electric Reliability Council.

“Our service area is not susceptible to the effects of solar flares in part because of our geology and research done in conjunction with the [University of Minnesota],” Adelmann said. Xcel does not anticipate any problems, he said, but will continue to monitor the situation for potential repercussions of any neighboring outages.

Satellites also are at risk during such storms but cell phones aren’t likely to be affected unless they rely on satellites, Combs said.

“Satellites are built to live out there, but an accumulation of hits can cause problems,” he said.

Operators can shut them down and put them in what is called a stow position until storms pass. They may need to be boosted back up to their correct altitudes after the storm.

Much like predicting a hurricane, forecasting the impact of a geomagnetic storm is difficult.

“It could just strike a glancing blow or hit head on,” Combs said.

Concern about the storm was triggered after one of the largest sunspot clusters in years developed over the past three days and produced a coronal mass ejection, similar to a solar flare, at 2 a.m. on Wednesday, forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

The disturbance was expected to produce a geomagnetic storm rated G3. A G5 storm is the strongest.

John Kappenman, division manager for Metatech Corp. in Duluth, has been studying space weather for 27 years.

“The indicators we’re seeing make this a moderate storm, which is not terribly exciting,” Kappenman said. “We don’t anticipate any disruptions that the public would see.”

Solar flares that are most active now are on a region of the sun pointed away from earth, he said.

“(By Tuesday) we could see activity directed at earth,” but there is no way to predict how intense the activity might be, Kappenman said. “These regions have the potential to produce as many as 15-20 flares or sometimes they just go quiet.”

Northern Minnesota may be more susceptible to damage from solar storms, Kappenman said, since it rests on the Laurentian Shield, composed of large areas of granite.

“The more resistant the ground, the more the tendency for that energy to find a path through metallic infrastructures on top of the ground, such as power grids and pipelines,” he said.

The storm could make the sun’s aurora visible as far south as Oregon and Illinois.

A coronal mass ejection is an explosion of gas and charged particles into space from the corona, the outermost layer of the sun’s atmosphere.

A second sunspot cluster not yet visible from Earth could produce more geomagnetic storms in the next two weeks, NOAA said.

–Staff writer J. Pinkley and news assistant Mary Harnan contributed to this report.