Few Reports of Damage From Sun Storm
W A S H I N G T O N, July 17 -- A severe geomagnetic storm that hit Earth this weekend interfered with data from at least one U.S. weather satellite and some power systems, U.S. government scientists said on Sunday.
But space weather forecasters at the National Oceanic andAtmospheric Administration (NOAA) Space Environment Center saidthe worst of Saturday’s storm, caused by a huge solar flare onFriday, was over.
“It has died down now. In the last six to nine hours we’reseeing [the storm] more unsettled-to-active,” forecaster CraigSechrest told Reuters from the center in Boulder, Colo.
NOAA said on its Web site that the storm, which hit at 10:40a.m. and was the largest solar radiation storm sinceOctober, 1989, was classified as severe-to-extreme withpotential effects on radio, communications, power systems andaviation.
Power Problems Not Major
A spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)said there had been no reports of problems from the storm.
“Some power companies had minor problems like...somevoltage swings, and some erroneous data from satellites like[the National Weather Service’s] GOES-8, [but] not to the pointwhere we couldn’t use them,” Sechrest added.
Sechrest said such storms often followed a hurricane-typepattern, with an initial onslaught, a calm “eye,” and a final,lesser-impact tail.
“There’s a slight chance we could see it pick up a littlemore tonight, but it wouldn’t go back to extreme,” he said.
Scientists had predicted that enthusiasts watching the skyovernight from Saturday to Sunday in mid-latitude U.S. citieslike Washington, New York, Denver and Seattle stood a goodchance of seeing the Aurora Borealis, or northern lights.
Huge Flares Possible
Sechrest reported a lesser flare on Saturday night, but saidit was unlikely to have any effect on earth since it was from adifferent region of the sun directed away from the planet.
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