Looks Like Two Incoming Coronal Mass Ejections

During the peak of the solar cycle, as we are in for cycle 25, we tend to focus on sunspots.  These cycles are regularly ranked and compared by their sunspot number, after all; the SSN or Smoothed Sunspot Number. 

While sunspots are very often the source of solar weather events that affect us, those things that affect the rest of the solar system don't always come from sunspot complexes.  There were two Coronal Mass Ejections from the sun this past weekend, Saturday the 12th and Sunday the 13th, that came from an area with no spots.  They're visible in this photo posted at SpaceWeather.com, as nearly vertical streaks of motion and then brighter colors.  They show up first slightly left of center, then slightly right of center.  The first one is higher on the solar disk than the second.  

Magnetic filaments are tubes of dense plasma held above the sun's surface by magnetic forces. The two pictured above are about 400,000 km long--longer than the distance between Earth and the Moon. These massive structures can erupt when their magnetic underpinnings become unstable. That happened twice in quick succession on April 12th and 13th--a rare double blast.

Fragments of the exploding filaments ripped through the sun's atmosphere to produce two CMEs, now heading for Earth. A one-two punch from these CMEs could spark a G2-class geomagnetic storm on April 16th. CME impact alerts: SMS Text.

I've been watching predictions like this more during this sunspot cycle (25) than any cycle before now, and I've posted about them several times.  Major geomagnetic storms, not G1 or G2 as being talked about here, but G7, 8 and above, can do substantial damage to the power grid and things connected to the grid that are plugged in when the storm hits.  That said, my experience with Space Weather predictions is that they're less reliable than "plain old" NOAA Earth forecasts so I tend to not go far out of my way to watch for the storms. Watching what's happening in more or less real time is easy to do; just go here. 

According to NOAA's forecast, the impact geomagnetic activity is expected to increase late on April 15 (1800 UTC is 2:00 PM EDT) or early April 16, peaking during the day and tapering off afterward.  Timing CME impacts can be tricky, so keep with Kp, the planetary K index, your aurora alerts turned on if you have any and stay flexible — storms don't always stick to a strict schedule. This forecast is from NOAA here.  This update is from 2025 UTC or 5:05PM EDT.

NOAA Kp index forecast 15 Apr - 17 Apr
             Apr 15    Apr 16    Apr 17

00-03UT        1.67      4.00      4.33      
03-06UT        2.33      3.00      4.33      
06-09UT        2.67      5.00      4.00      
09-12UT        2.33      4.00      3.67      
12-15UT        2.67      6.00      4.33      
15-18UT        2.00      4.00      3.00      
18-21UT        3.00      5.00      2.67      
21-00UT        3.67      4.33      4.00      

With the highest single predicted Kp at 6.0 on Wednesday morning at 8 to 11AM (EDT), this doesn't look to be dangerous, but could be fun for ham propagation on the highest HF bands and the 6m VHF band.