Earth Is Currently Under A Geomagnetic Storm!

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:01][music] >> James Coffman with this report today.

[00:00:08]As you know, we've been in a geomagnetic storm and a disturbance now for 12 hours.

[00:00:16]And it promises to get worse over the next hour or two.

[00:00:22]Now, according to our estimated planetary KP index, which is really a measurement of plasma and solar winds here on ground level, and the exclusive KP index used by NASA and NOAA, we started the day out with 3 hours of a G1 geomagnetic storm, the lightest geomagnetic storm we could have, followed by a G2 geomagnetic storm.

[00:00:53]That bar is a 5.67.

[00:00:56]It's barely a G2 geomagnetic storm, followed by 3 more hours of a G1 geomagnetic storm, followed by the last 3 hours of a geomagnetic disturbance. Now, I expect this to go back into storm levels when the next shoe drops here.

[00:01:15]Looking at some of the other KP indexes in different parts of the country, also measuring plasma and solar winds at ground level, well, we had actually a G3 geomagnetic storm, our college KP index with a solid 12 hours of a geomagnetic storm. And in comparison, our Boulder KP index says that we had a total of 9 hours of just a geomagnetic disturbance and 3 hours of a G2 geomagnetic storm.

[00:01:50]So, you can see it's all over the chart depending on exactly where you are in the world or in the United States under these circumstances.

[00:01:59]You can actually see the KP index over in Germany as well, but I did check it and it looks generally the same.

[00:02:07]All right, taking a look at our sun, and this is goes 19 solar ultraviolet imager 195 angstroms. You can see the culprit from this geomagnetic storm here. It's this large coronal hole missing the upper canopy of the sun, allowing high stream speeds uh of solar wind to pour out towards Earth.

[00:02:35]Now, that was directly Earth-facing and it no longer is, but these winds regularly take about 40 hours to travel from the sun to Earth, which is about 93 million miles away.

[00:02:51]Now, this is a little bit different in the fact that it seems like we've had some plasma pushed at Earth by the solar winds right before they struck.

[00:03:04]And I'd like to clarify that. Coronal holes like this one push solar winds towards Earth, which can cause a geomagnetic storm.

[00:03:13]A filament eruption or a solar flare regularly pushes something a little bit heavier called plasma in the form of a coronal mass ejection towards Earth from the sun.

[00:03:30]And here we see plasma in front of the solar winds.

[00:03:35]And that might have been plasma just picked up, but happened to be on the slow path to Earth in between Earth and the sun, and it was pushed at Earth by the solar winds.

[00:03:53]Now, we'll show you that. It's not very unique, but you don't see it too often.

[00:04:00]We're going to jump over to our Discover real-time wind satellite.

[00:04:07]It actually orbits at 1 million miles above Earth at Lagrange point 1, and always stays right in between the sun and Earth, 1/93 of the way to the sun.

[00:04:23]Now, regularly, space weather takes about 40 minutes to get here.

[00:04:29]And that's a general 40 minutes after it hits this satellite.

[00:04:34]So, let's see what we have here.

[00:04:36]First, taking a look at our shields.

[00:04:38]They've been up and they've been down.

[00:04:40]Uh this is the zero line here. Our shields are in red.

[00:04:44]The red is above zero, the shields are up. But, if the red is below zero, like these areas here, the shields were down for hours. They're also highlighted in purple if they're down.

[00:04:58]Now, then we have the actual angle to the shields.

[00:05:03]The northern angle is always much more safe for Earth and always deflects the solar winds and plasma better than it being at a southern angle as it was at the beginning of the day.

[00:05:20]Now, we're going to start out looking at plasma. You can see this bunch of plasma here measures in the 41.58, 36.

[00:05:32]Uh some fairly high measurements in there. 35, 35, 40, 44.

[00:05:40]Now, this was not caused by a coronal mass ejection or a filament injection.

[00:05:49]This was actually gathered up and pushed at Earth in front of the solar winds. And you can see them moving as slow as 300 km/s, and we've actually built up to 600 km/s.

[00:06:07]And you can see just right before they push and hit the satellite, all the plasma hits the satellite.

[00:06:17]So, this is the big push when they move from 300 up to 500, up 200 km/s, and they picked up all this plasma and pushed it at Earth to cause that G2 geomagnetic storm, I guess G3 on one of the indexes.

[00:06:38]So, that's what caused that. Now, solar winds are still on the rise, and they're expected to continue in geomagnetic storm levels for the next few hours and probably into tomorrow.

[00:06:56]You can see the same thing happen here.

[00:06:58]Looking at the temperatures, they're basically right at normal. And when that solar wind finally decides to pick up from here, 350 to 500, we can see that temperature rise along with it.

[00:07:13]Right? Just like we talked about.

[00:07:17]And this plasma here got pushed out in front of that solar wind and hit that satellite uh being pushed by the solar wind prior to the solar wind hitting the satellite.

[00:07:31]Pretty easy if you look at it, but not that easy if you haven't dealt with it before.

[00:07:38]All right, this is our ACE real-time space weather, and it's actually orbiting at 1 million miles above Earth at Lagrange point 1 as well. It's our older of the two, but it gives great information and really duplicates uh our Discover, which is the newer of the two.

[00:07:59]We have that same well, bit of plasma pretty much sure it's high as 45 uh being pushed ahead of the solar winds that you can see jump up here along with the temperature.

[00:08:16]See that plasma finally well, finally impact ACE all the way, and here comes that solar wind that pushed it at that satellite to be measured.

[00:08:30]Now, here our the angle of shields are really, really great here, very protective.

[00:08:38]And our shields in red are up and down. We can pretend that the white line is the space weather trying to get through.

[00:08:49]It's a good way to look at it.

[00:08:51]Again, you can see as soon as as soon as that solar wind starts to take off, it's already been pushing on this.

[00:09:00]You can see that temperature follow it up. And now again, we're at 600, just over 600 km/s, and I would expect us to go higher than that.

[00:09:14]Taking a look at NOAA's KP index breakdown, it's a forecast from April 18th today, 19th, and 20th.

[00:09:22]Well, they were pretty right on here with the G1s and G2s, and we are having a break here.

[00:09:31]And I would expect a G2 to be the next shoe that drops based on the solar winds moving up.

[00:09:38]So, they actually did a pretty good job of a forecast here, which is unusual, to say the least.

[00:09:47]So, with that said, if you're not feeling 100% today, understood. We've been getting pounded by plasma and solar winds and we could expect that to continue into tomorrow according to the forecast.

[00:10:06]Although the next 3 hours will probably be the strongest uh geomagnetic activity that we experience over the next 24 hours.

[00:10:18]God bless you guys.

[00:10:20]Stay safe.

[00:10:22]Keep your tin foil hats on.

[00:10:24]Please share, thumbs up, and always remember anything's possible in Bizarro World.