Solar Tsunami Alert
As Giant Sunspot Looms

BreakForNews.com, 15th Jan, 2005 12:00ET
by Fintan Dunne, Editor EXCLUSIVE
http://www.breakfornews.com/articles/SolarTsunamiAlert.htm....

Fast-developing sunspot could match historic flares of Nov. '03

The sunspot grew quickly over the last four days -Image Spaceweather.com

Three days ago the sunspot numbered 10720 barely rated a mention. But as it rotated into an earth-facing position, the boiling solar cauldron quickly mushroomed in size to over seven times the diameter of our own planet. Now experienced observers say it has explosive potential for massive solar eruptions aimed at Earth.

It's been a busy 24 hours on the sun. A total of 28 C-class events were recorded yesterday --the most C flares in a single day during the current solar cycle 23.

"Extremely energetic flares, above the X10 class level, are possible," coments solar watcher Jan Alvestad. "This region has the potential to generate flares similar to those observed in October/November 2003."

Such an X-class 10 flare would certainly rank along with the historic flares of late 2003, when a series of nine massive X-class solar eruptions in only 12 days all largely missed Earth. Nevertheless two Japanese satellite failures and a power outage in Sweden were blamed on the solar storms.