Earth just suffered the WORST solar storm in 6 years due to this terrifying triple whammy

On March 23, the worst solar storm event in 6 years was witnessed when a G4-class geomagnetic storm wreaked havoc on Earth. Today, it has left scientists scrambling to find the reasons.

After suffering a G4-class geomagnetic storm, the worst solar storm event in 6 years, astronomers are trying to figure out what caused it. And there are three main culprits happening at the same time. (Pixabay)

The solar storm onslaught that began at the start of this year, reached a new milestone on Thursday night when a G4-class geomagnetic storm struck the planet. Today, it has left scientists scrambling to find the reasons that caused it. Scientists are trying to find out whether the storm damaged satellites, impacted GPS and mobile phone networks, internet cables or harmed the power grids. The Earth had already suffered a couple of G3-class storms recently, but this particular event was deemed to be the most intense in the last 6 years. The worst, and scariest, part is that no forecaster was able to pick up on this incident ahead of time. So, what caused one of the worst solar storms to strike the Earth and why was there no prediction of such a terrifying event? Find out.

According to a report by SpaceWeather.com, “This remarkable and surprising storm began on March 23rd when magnetic fields in the space around Earth suddenly shifted. South-pointing magnetic fields can open a crack in Earth's magnetosphere and, indeed, that's what happened. Earth's "shields were down" for almost 24 hours, allowing solar wind to penetrate and the storm to build to category G4”.

What caused this solar storm

It should be noted that since space agencies were not able to predict the storm, they are not entirely sure on the reason that might have caused such a scary geomagnetic storm to penetrate the Earth's upper atmosphere. But based on previous reports and developments, it can be narrowed down to three reasons.

First is the vernal equinox. On March 21, the Earth entered its spring equinox, when the magnetic field lines of our planet are at their weakest. Second was the large coronal hole that opened up in the atmosphere of the Sun and sent huge amounts of solar winds to the Earth. It was expected to reach between March 23 and 24. And finally, an unexpected CME cloud passed near our planet. All three of these situations were taking place around the same time frame. So, when a CME cloud came to the Earth, likely the solar winds gave it that extra magnetic flux to cause a powerful geomagnetic storm. And with cracks opening in the Earth's magnetic field lines, the particles were easily able to penetrate into the upper atmosphere and cause the worst solar storm in six years.

The tech behind solar storm predictions

NOAA monitors the solar storms and Sun's behavior using its DSCOVR satellite which became operational in 2016. The recovered data is then run through the Space Weather Prediction Center and the final analysis is prepared. The different measurements are done on temperature, speed, density, degree of orientation and frequency of the solar particles.