Active geomagnetic conditions due to CME passage
Saturday, 10 March 2018 10:23 UTC
The coronal mass ejection that we discussed back on Wednesday arrived yesterday evening at Earth.
The impact itself was hardly noticeable but the plasma cloud brought along a surprisingly strong magnetic field (Bt) which is very stable around 15nT at the moment and the Bz dipped to -11nT briefly just passed midnight UTC.
The coronal mass ejection was in hindsight stronger than we expected but it still wasn't enough to bring us up to geomagnetic storm conditions. Active geomagnetic conditions (Kp4) were observed between 00:00 and 09:00 UTC today.
There has been no signs of a coronal hole solar wind stream yet which means the stream might have went north of our planet and missed us completely. Geomagnetic storm conditions (Kp5 or greater) aren't expected but high latitude sky watchers should remain alert for aurora in the hours ahead.
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