An aurora, as seen over the Poker Flat Research Range north of Fairbanks, Alaska, back on Feb. 28. NOAA/Courtesy
This image of the sun is from NASA's STEREO satellites. NASA/Courtesy
As it turns out, the weather in Tulsa isn't the only weather getting meddled with by the sun.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a release (check it out
here) on what to expect when the sun impacts space weather.
"On a summer day in 1859, a silent surge of power from a major geomagnetic storm fueled by a solar eruption hit telegraph offices around the world," states the NOAA release. "Some telegraph operators got electric shocks. Papers caught fire. And perhaps most amazing, many telegraph systems still sent and received signals even after operators disconnected batteries.
"It was as if the very air was charged with electricity."
"Space weather" is what the NOAA describes as "the conditions in space that affect Earth and its technological systems." Read more on space weather
here.
Airline communications, GPS apps and power grids are all reportedly vulnerable to space weather. The peak of this solar activity (or as the NOAA puts it, "when the sun acts up") is expected in 2013, when the sun hits its solar maximum in an 11-year cycle.
As for the sun right now, the Associated Press is reporting that it is getting a bit active... this week!
Three solar flares erupted on the sun starting Tuesday, and the strongest electromagnetic shocks were being felt Friday by the ACE spacecraft, a satellite that measures radiation bursts a few minutes before they strike Earth, Joseph Kunches, a scientist at NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colo., told the AP.
The most common impacts of solar flares for the average person are the glowing auroras around the north and south poles, and the researchers told the AP those could be visible this weekend. Since we aren't located near a pole, check out the cool photo from NOAA to the right!
The good news is that the current solar storm is not expected to be as powerful as ones that have knocked out communications systems in the past. On a scale of 1 to 5, an official told the AP that this is probably a 2 or 3.
--Althea Peterson
PS: With the frequent weather articles that we've been filing, I highly encourage you all to join in the weather article coversations at Facebook at
http://www.facebook.com/tulsaworld. Here's an excerpt:
What are your most creative words to describe Tulsa's recent 112 and 113-degree highs?"Hot today hot tamale" -- Kevin Williams.
