Trials and Errors #61: The Carrington Event and the "What If's" of our Sun's Activities

Maybe... but I wonder who would listen and prepare... or even know HOW to prepare? Who would school the flock?

 

A Carrington-like event could knock out social media. And crypto mining and AI data centers. All that might be a net positive.

Just kidding. Maybe.

 

True.

Unfortunately people have a tendency to think of a geomagnetic event as creating the same kinds of hazards to the modern electrically connected (conductive) world like a lightning or nuclear EMP situation would. They really are two very different things, the former are "over" in milliseconds. The geomagnetic event could go on for many hours in a sustained way. But the frequency distribution and peak voltages are way lower. That calls for somewhat different mitigation strategies.

The fact that virtually all "wired" long haul communications is over fiber these days is almost certainly a good thing for such a geomagnetic event. The only lingering thing in my mind that could be a problem with "fiber" is the conductive tracer wire included in fiber bundles. Would those tracer wires be a problem area? I don't know.

 

What was its title ??? Still available .?

 

Thanks Don. I'm happy you are here commenting on the topic. Much appreciated! Dave

 

Thanks Duane. Great post and the best (actually NOT non-sensical) advice on how to deal with this at the household level. Required reading IMHO. With regards to how much warning . . . in 1859, it was 17 hours between time of event on the sun and the effect here. I certainly hope that governments wouldn't get in the way and that amateur astronomers would jump in if they did -- to give us more warning than 17 hours. Dave, W7DGJ

 

I sincerely believe that there would be great reluctance on the part of Government to scare the masses. My hope is that my home would be on the opposite side of the planet from where the event hits the hardest. Dave W7DGJ

 

It's an interesting article Dave. Unfortunately there is too much misinformation out there on the web nowadays. Gloom and doom translate into mouse clicks which translate into revenue for the owners of the website. There was a very intense set of flares around Halloween about 20 years ago. As I recall there was minimal power outages across the globe. Technology has vastly improved since the mid 1800's. Now, I'll be the first to admit that I'm no expert on solar weather but in the past few years I've learned some things about it. The possibilities and probabilities of a major flare are minor and the effects are usually over rated. I got set straight on much of these fears by a website (spaceweatherlive.com). There are a lot of very knowledgeable folks on that site. So, let's not worry about what could possibly happen. Your odds of getting run over by a truck are infinitely greater

 

Thanks Hal. I have not forecasted anything here other than to point out things in the PAST that have occurred, So, we're not pumping up the fear factor for benefit of QRZ. Just so interesting how events on the sun can create such issues here on Earth! PS - Next months article is about the 372 hams that have been run over by a truck over the years and about the steps we must take to prevent that (just kidding) Dave, W7DGJ

 

There's a continuum between:
1. Doom and gloom thinking and/or burying our collective heads in the sand, and therefore just throwing our hands up and do nothing at all to prepare.
Vs.
2. Seeking to identify and understand the exact nature of the actual hazards, and then implement or do things in ways that mitigate the potential problems or risks.

I find it kinda remarkable how many quickly fall into #1 thinking. And while the #2 can certainly be overdone, it is in my opinion still the far better approach. And it is precisely what is being done by utilities and others that would be most directly impacted by a massive geomagnetic event should one occur, but that preparation and mitigation work just isn't exciting enough to generate a lot of mouse clicks.

It is a very low probability that I will ever need to take any of the steps that I outlined in post #15, but having thought about it ahead of time, and formulating a plan for it is really no different than formulating a plan ahead of time for if a tornado is bearing down on me.

It is also kinda like the whole Y2K issue. There are countless people who will say that it was all just a big hoax because nothing bad happened. Well, the reason that almost nothing bad happened was because those of us in the software industry at that time did our jobs per #2, and fixed the issue well ahead of time. But it is clear that there would have been many broken things if nothing had been done to fix it, but I don't believe that it would have been anywhere close to a 'end of civilization catastrophe' either like the doom and gloomers were spewing in their predictions.

 

Exactly. It was all hands on deck for years working on software. Lots of new hardware replaced obsolete unfixable stuff.

And in fact many things did slip through Y2K, and continue to today. Not many are of any consequence, but some are. Comp.risks archive has many stories, perhaps a few hundred.

 

I read the part that said "But wow, how cool it is to be riding the wave of a good sunspot cycle." and wondered who and where?

I've been on HF more than I have for a number of years, often trying to work someone during various parts of the day. In my experience, working outside of Europe, for me, is a rare event. In fact, it's better for one activity called Eu Snakes & Ladders as that is based on working people in the European area.

I ust did a check on DXCC countries worked on the HF bands for me since 1st January 2025 and it came back as follows.

Summary of DXCC entities worked by any callsign on all bands
Type of propagation: All Mode: All mode
From 01/01/2025 to 16/07/2025 Page: 1
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

DATA OF FIRST QSO
---------------------------------------
DXCC QSO Conf. CALLSIGN DATE TIME BAND
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SN-SR (Poland) 10 0 SP6OJK 11/01/2025 11:57 6 m.
G, GX (England) 260 0 G8SEI 11/01/2025 12:02 4 m.
EI-EJ (Ireland) 1 0 EI6GAK 20/01/2025 10:07 30 m.
I (Italy) 35 0 IK2XRL 20/01/2025 10:56 20 m.
F (France) 51 0 F5IUZ 20/01/2025 14:33 17 m.
GW, GC (Wales) 11 0 2W0JYN 26/01/2025 13:58 2 m.
DA-DL (Fed. Rep. of Germa) 84 1 DJ5ZU 28/01/2025 17:00 40 m.
UA-UI1,3,4,6, (European Russia) 6 0 RU1AQ 29/01/2025 10:03 12 m.
LA-LN (Norway) 3 0 LA2XNA 30/01/2025 09:16 20 m.
EA-EH (Spain) 13 0 EA5DQW 30/01/2025 09:45 17 m.
UR-UZ, EM-EO (Ukraine) 3 0 US2YW 30/01/2025 10:41 12 m.
OK-OL (Czech Republic) 8 0 OK1AY 30/01/2025 17:07 40 m.
YT-YU, YZ (Serbia) 1 0 YU1KW 31/01/2025 11:01 15 m.
PA-PI (Netherlands) 12 0 PG6NTC 01/02/2025 10:34 30 m.
SA-SM (Sweden) 17 0 SM0GNS 03/02/2025 10:50 15 m.
GM, GS (Scotland) 7 0 GM0HKS 07/02/2025 16:00 40 m.
YO-YR (Romania) 1 0 YO4WO 16/02/2025 11:56 12 m.
GI, GN (Northern Ireland) 5 0 GI4CZW 17/02/2025 10:27 40 m.
OE (Austria) 8 0 OE5GYL 21/02/2025 10:43 17 m.
CT (Portugal) 2 0 CT2HEX 21/02/2025 14:43 20 m.
OF-OI (Finland) 5 0 OH1TX 28/02/2025 09:00 20 m.
IS, IM (Sardinia) 1 0 IS0IGM 01/03/2025 16:56 12 m.
SV-SZ (Greece) 1 0 SV3ICK 01/03/2025 17:39 15 m.
LZ (Bulgaria) 3 0 LZ1FAX 05/03/2025 15:31 17 m.
S5 (Slovenia) 2 0 S57AP 06/03/2025 13:18 20 m.
OZ (Denmark) 3 0 OZ6OM 07/03/2025 12:56 30 m.
K,W,N, AA-AK (United States of A) 2 0 KE2BVB 08/03/2025 14:02 15 m.
HB (Switzerland) 6 0 HB9DAX 14/03/2025 13:30 20 m.
ON-OT (Belgium) 4 0 ON6CQ 15/03/2025 08:56 30 m.
OM (Slovak Republic) 3 0 OM3TBG 29/03/2025 12:26 20 m.
ES (Estonia) 1 0 ES3RF 01/04/2025 12:52 12 m.
E7 (Bosnia-Herzegovina) 1 0 E74S 27/04/2025 16:11 17 m.
9A (Croatia) 1 0 9A2UN 03/05/2025 19:12 30 m.
GU, GP (Guernsey) 1 1 GU3TUX 13/06/2025 18:38 70 cm.
EA6-EH6 (Balearic Is.) 1 0 EA6BB 19/06/2025 13:57 6 m.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total: 35 573 2

So, just the two contacts outside of Europe and both were the USA. You will also notice that Guernsey has only been worked on 70cm and it was a CW contact as well. The band designation is for the 1st contact with that country, so for example Poland and England appear as 6M and 4M but other contacts were made on HF bands as well.

Dave (G0DJA)

 

Hi Dave,

I left a big question for readers to answer, and you're the first to come back. I assume (though not stated) that you don't think the Cycle 25 makes it to the level it was hyped to have been. As I said, it's fun to be working a good solar cycle as 10 meters was a blast, but on whole I think it's been rather disappointing. My last comments towards the end of the article ask others for their opinions. Dave, W7DGJ

 

Of course it could happen again. No one knows if it WILL or not, so lets all make some money off the possibility anyway.

If it does happen, not a thing we can do about it. Remember back when we had to stand in line for hours to get plates for our cars. Renember having to write checks for everything and mail order wait was 4 to 6 weeks.

We'll figure it out.

 

For my work it was a big part of 1999, though well short of all hands on deck effort. We covered our customer's systems 100%. But yeah, the holiday party that year was a very nice one since we had to update systems that could not be fixed. Though those systems would have only been around for another 3-4 years otherwise. So the upgrades just got accelerated a bit.