Two earth-directed coronal mass ejections
Monday, 30 December 2024 19:31 UTC
Our Sun remains fairly active today but no coronal mass ejections were launched today with a clear earth-directed component. We do however want to talk about yesterday's events again as more data and opinions have emerged...
Long story short, the general consensus is now that the coronal mass ejection visible on SOHO/LASCO yesterday around 7 UTC is indeed a front-side event and will likely impact Earth late (UTC evening) tomorrow, 31 December. It is likely associated with the M2 solar flare which peaked around 04:30 UTC from sunspot region 3939. The NOAA SWPC has a strong G3 geomagnetic storm watch in effect which seems a bit high for this CME, but we have our fingers crossed and hope for a surprise!
A second CME which we also talked about yesterday became visible at 18:12 UTC and came from sunspot region 3939. This coronal mass ejection is faint but does have an earth-directed component and could arrive on 1 January in the wake of the first CME. So yeah, we could be looking at quite a stormy start of 2025!
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