Two earth-directed coronal mass ejections surprised space weather forecasters with their arrival time and geomagnetic impact. The first one passed almost unnoticeable, the second one eventually resulted in a strong geomagnetic storm.
SIDC News
NOAA 4405 produced an X-class flare early on 30 March. The associated CME arrived around noon on 1 April. There's no chance on aurora over Belgium tonight. ***(UPDATED 2)***
Though the solar cycle maximum is already 1.5 years behind us, we may still expect a number of very strong solar flares over the next 2 years.
The STCE's SC25 Tracking page has been updated to reflect the latest evolution of some critical space weather parameters for the ongoing solar cycle 25 (SC25). Some significant space weather events have been recorded during the last five months.
The Sun was nearly spotless during a few days late February, as reported by SILSO (provisional sunspot numbers). The last spotless day dates back to 11 December 2021.
In 2019, the Solar Cycle Prediction Panel convened to gather and combine predictions for the still infant Solar Cycle 25.
Coming back once again to the 19 January 2026 solar storm, highlighting the extraordinary solar wind conditions associated with the passage of this interplanetary CME.
On February 6, the finalists of the 'Battle of the Scientists' explained their space weather research to an audience of children between 6 and 12 years.
On February 17, an annular eclipse took place. Unfortunately, from Earth, annularity was only visible over Antarctica. Fortunately PROBA-2 was on duty and witnessed not one but four eclipses.
A recent paper by Cliver et al. (2025) has shed some additional light on why strong X-class flares are sometimes not associated with a coronal mass ejection.
NOAA 14366 has become the most flare-productive group of the ongoing solar cycle. In fact, it's already on the third place of groups producing the most M- and X-class flares since the start of the GOES measurements half a century ago!
On 19 January 2026, one of the strongest solar radiation storms of the last few decades took place. However, though the storm contained a large number of low-energy protons, the number of high-energy protons remained mostly at background levels. A few aspects of this event are discussed, and a crude reference is provided.