Massive Solar Storm

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One of the threats that faces Earth is a massive solar storm. It can destroy the large power transformers at power generating stations. These transformers are unique specialized million dollar units, one-of-a-kind that have lead-times of over a year for replacement.

In short a massive solar storm similar to the Carrington Flare of 1859 can generate a massive blackout. But the main problem is that it might take a year or more to get the power back on. Just imagine trying to survive a year without electricity. It would produce a major cataclysm in our modern world.

I came across an article this morning that shows what U.S. states would be affected by such an outage. Here is a map.


This map released by the USGS show where the power is most likely to fail: The Denver metropolitan area, the Pacific northwest, the Atlantic seaboard, and a cluster of Midwestern states near the US-Canadian Border. Bright yellow and orange trace the trouble spots across the contiguous USA.

Power companies have long been wary of the sun. Solar storms can cause strong electric currents to flow through commercial power lines--so strong that the lines can't handle it. Fuses blow, transformers melt, and circuit breakers trip. The most famous geomagnetic power outage happened during a space storm in March 1989 when six million people in Quebec lost power for 9 hours.

Whether or not *your* power goes out during a solar storm depends on two things: (1) The configuration of power lines in your area and (2) the electrical properties of the ground beneath your feet. In areas of more electrically resistive rock, currents struggle to flow through the ground. Instead, they leap up into overhead power lines – a scenario that played out in Quebec in 1989.

The new maps are possible thanks to Earthscope--a National Science Foundation magnetotelluric survey of the upper 2/3rds of the contiguous USA. Earthscope mapped the electrical properties of deep rock and soil on a continent-spanning grid with points about 70 km apart. USGS researchers led by Greg Lucas and Jeffrey Love combined this information with the layout of modern power lines to estimate peak voltages during a century-class storm.

They found a huge variation in hazard across the USA. "The largest estimated once-per-century geoelectric field is 27.2 V/km at a site located in Maine, while the lowest estimated once-per-century geoelectric field is 0.02 V/km at a site located in Idaho. That is more than 3 orders of magnitude difference," they wrote in their research paper A 100‐year Geoelectric Hazard Analysis for the U.S. High‐Voltage Power Grid. Notably, some of the most vulnerable regions are near big cities: Denver, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, DC.

To complete the hazard map, the researchers are waiting for a new magnetotelluric survey to cover the rest of the USA. It can't come soon enough. The last "century-class" geomagnetic storm hit in May 1921 ... 99 years ago.

Source: Article - WHERE THE POWER GOES OUT of 10 April 2020

At the moment, the sun is unusually quiet and I do not expect this particular threat to occur during the next decade.

Oh goody, I happen to live in one of those states.

The Northern Lights usually give good shows then.The people in those state will have a great view without the electricity.

I think the Plague of Frogs comes first, then the Solar Storm.

I'm more concerned about satellites sending out signals that wipe out all electronic devices. I heard that technology exists. If it does, it wouldn't surprise me if someone or a group got mad enough to use it. I'm also more concerned about terrorists hacking into power grids