alt Hacker NewsLevel S4 solar radiation event
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We had intense aurora in Berlin, Germany. Green clouds dancing in the sky levels. Started around 22:10 local time or a bit earlier, and at this point there's only a faint red/green glow remaining.
Nice, you can already see some solar flares in Austria again.
Any tips on best practices in how one can protect homelab rigs from a Carrington level event? Let's say we were given two days notice that the mother of all S4s was inbound. Just switch everything off?
What if one of my homelabs needed 100% uptime to meet my wife's SLA for messaging? Is this able to be protected?
I had the most intensely coloured lights visible in the west of Ireland. I've seen them a few times before but never like this. Phones were capturing them in video not just long exposures.
Not sure what the best service is to be alerted ahead of time. Apparently it'll be strong here again at 6am according to some of the apps some random people were waving around.
PJM had some geomagnetic disturbance warnings, but did not progress to the alert stage or grid re-configuation actions. So, no US power grid problems.
104955 Warning Geomagnetic Disturbance Warning 01.19.2026 14:30
PJM-RTO
A Geomagnetic Disturbance Warning has been issued for
14:30 on 01.19.2026 through 16:00 on 01.19.2026 .
A GMD warning of K8 or greater is in effect for this period.
End time: 01.19.2026 16:00
I've posted on this before, for other warnings. Not going to repeat that.
Moon should be good too to see Aurora tonight: waxing crescent 1% https://www.moongiant.com/phase/today/
Australian Bureau of Meteorology advisory for visible aurora: https://www.sws.bom.gov.au/Aurora
Although everyone is interested in visible aurora, the proton flux is also really impressive. It peaked at 37,000 pfu at 1910Z. The highest ever recorded was 43,500 pfu in March 1991.
How rare is this?
G4 storms are ~100 per solar cycle (~11 years).
So roughly 9 G4 events/year on average.
This page looks like an accessibility nightmare. The entire warning text is an image. There is no transcription present for screen reader users. I did not expect this from a government website.
fascinating, hope our critical infrastructure can handle this. how long does something like this last, and will it have an effect on artemis 2?
hypothetical: if a carrington event-esque storm happens during the mission, how badly will the houston <-> orion module communication links be affected?
Title says "S4" solar radiation event, but the linked page says "G4" geomagnetic storm
Discussion of the event https://community.spaceweatherlive.com/topic/4210-x19-cme/
Do you need long exposure to make it visible with a camera? How does that work in the presence of light pollution?
There is a video update from the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center. (I could only find this on Facebook) https://www.facebook.com/reel/1190509063198524
Years ago I was concerned about this and made a plan with my wife for what to do if she was at work.
But now we have a bunch of kids in different schools and haven't updated our plan.
Does anyone have a plan for what happens if we have a really bad event?
I wonder if we're going to see an aurora over Seattle tonight?
Hopefully it's clear space weather for Artemis II coming up. I wonder what they do if it's inclement en route?
Weirdly, while the site in question is "blaring klaxons!" there are more "cool night lights!" posts than concern.
I'll be going out tonight if this continues into Australian night time hours.
At this strength, I could see the full display including colors with my naked eye in Melbourne, May 11th 2024. This storm is slightly stronger than that event.
Possible aurora visible through central US tonight
Nice. And it's somewhat relieving to read this over a Starlink connection.
It seems that the peak was several hours ago, and I haven't observed any effects from it...
Darn Montreal is still too south. Wish I were in Winnipeg.
Probably a stupid question, but should I unplug my EV? (UK)
any effects on the human body??
Up to G-5 possibly. Cell phone visible in dark areas throughout most of CONUS.
It was mentioned that air travel ionizing radiation exposure increases during geomagnetic storms. I'd consider pausing travel for a couple of days to not be a guinea pig because there's not enough data to consider it safe. If anyone absolutely must fly tonight, it'd be interesting if they were to take a high sensitivity dosimeter to see what happens.
TL;DR: A severe (G4-level) geomagnetic storm hit Earth on January 19, 2026 due to a solar coronal mass ejection. It can disrupt power grids, GPS, satellite systems, and radio communications, while creating visible aurora displays at higher latitudes.
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If anyone is interested in what "G4" means in context, here's the scale: https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/noaa-scales-explanation