Subsiding coronal hole effects, NOAA data outage
Wednesday, 18 February 2015 12:53 UTC
Auroral activity has been elevated the past few days all thanks to a coronal hole high speed stream which pushed the direction of the IMF (Bz) southward near -11nT for large parts of the day yesterday. This caused a brief G1 geomagnetic storm during the hours around midnight UTC with amazing auroral displays being reported from large parts of northern Europe (like in northern Sweden where Beate Behnke took this stunning image that serves as our header) and the upper United States. Keep on reading for more amazing auroral images from all over the world!
Graeme Whipps Photography (Aberdeenshire, United Kingdom)
MagnumphotO (Moskosel, Sweden)
Jesse Davis Images (North Pole, Alaska USA)
Zoltan Kenwell (Alberta, Canada)
James Rowley-Hill (Norfolk, United Kingdom)
Dave Thompson (Edmundybers, United Kingdom)
Duncan Arnold (Norfolk, United Kingdom)
Thomas Kast (Hetta, Finland)
Edoardo Miola (Västerbotten, Sweden)
Andrew Wells (Skibotn, Norway)
The solar wind speed has picked up slightly since last night's geomagnetic storm indicating this activity was indeed caused by a coronal hole but the catalyst of this storm was the direction and strength of the IMF which have collapsed to very average values. More geomagnetic storming is not to be expected in the days ahead.
NOAA data outage
The NOAA SWPC has announced that their services will be temporarily suspended due to facility power system maintenance on 21 February. Data from NOAA will be unavailable or outdated between 13:00 UTC and 22:00 UTC this coming Saturday. A lot of the data that we use come from NOAA and this means that parts of our website will not be up-to-date this coming Saturday so keep this in mind. Below NOAA's announcement:
On Saturday, February 21st, SWPC operations will be temporarily suspended due to facility power system maintenance. The outage window will be between 6:00 AM and 3:00PM Mountain Standard Time on that day. During this time all SWPC forecast and alert products, data products, and email Product Subscription Service will be suspended. SWPC's website will remain in service, but all data will be stale until the power outage has concluded. In the event of active space weather or a reasonable chance of active space weather, this maintenance will be postponed. Phone notification of key stakeholders and customers currently receiving that level of support will continue uninterrupted during this outage.
CANCELLED: SERVICE INTERRUPTION
Added Thursday 19 February, 2015:
The NOAA SWPC has cancelled the service interruption that was planned for this coming Saturday. This means that our website will continue as normal this coming Saturday. Below NOAA's announcement:
The service outage scheduled for Saturday, February 21st, for facility power system maintenance has been canceled. Alternative dates are now being considered and will be provided as soon as a decision is made.
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