[NCC] The Big One?

[Jimk8mr at aol.com]

Be glad we're not doing CQWW today!  Of course, this may not be good news for 
CW SS coming up this weekend....



>From Spaceweather.com:

One of the <A HREF="http://www.spaceweather.com/solarflares/topflares.html">most powerful</A> solar flares in years, a remarkable <A HREF="http://www.spaceweather.com/glossary/flareclasses.html">X17-category</A> 
explosion, erupted from giant sunspot 486 this morning at approximately 1110 UT 
and, as a result, a strong solar radiation storm is in progress. (<A HREF="http://www.spaceweather.com/glossary/srs.html">Click here</A> to 
learn about the effects of such storms.) The explosion hurled a coronal mass 
ejection (CME) directly toward Earth. When it left the sun, the cloud was 
traveling 2125 km/s (almost 5 million mph). This CME could trigger bright auroras 
when it sweeps past our planet perhaps as early as tonight.