Coronal hole faces Earth
Thursday, 21 April 2016 11:34 UTC
A trans equatorial extension of the northern hemisphere polar coronal hole is now facing Earth. This coronal hole is now sending an enhanced solar wind stream towards Earth which will likely cause enhanced geomagnetic conditions in about two days from now.
This coronal hole was also present during the previous rotation and only caused one period where we reached Kp4 (active geomagnetic conditions) on 28 March. There is no reason to believe that we should expect more this time around so again we should expect nothing more than active geomagnetic conditions when the solar wind stream arrives, which will likely be on Saturday, 23 April.
A coronal hole is facing Earth. Enhanced solar wind could arrive in ~3 days - Follow live on https://t.co/T1Jkf60tdB pic.twitter.com/KiCK7QIQTT
— SpaceWeatherLive (@_SpaceWeather_) 20 april 2016
Coronal holes will likely once more become the most interesting solar features to look out for in the foreseeable future as sunspot region 2529 (source of an M6.7 solar flare) now rotated onto the far side of the Sun. There are only two small sunspot regions on the Earth-facing disk right now and none of them are likely to produce a strong solar flare.
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