A wild few days for the Sun are being felt around Earth as the effects of its tantrums lash us across the gulf of space.

On 7 August, the Sun unleashed a powerful, X-class flare that caused radio blackouts across North America.

Space weather forecasts also predicted a combined ‘cannibal’ coronal mass ejection (CME) that erupted several days ago on 5 August would clip our atmosphere in a glancing blow. While it might well still produce a late arriving solar storm, forecasters now suspect it may have missed altogether.

We might expect to see this sort of solar behavior increasing in the coming months, as the Sun escalates towards the peak of its 11-year activity cycle, predicted to take place in July 2025.

The Sun has been consistently spitting out daily eruptions for over 18 months now, but it’s definitely ramping up. June and July each saw an X-class flare, the most powerful classification we have for solar flares.

Moreover, in July, we recorded an M-class flare – the second-most powerful – almost every day.

We’re not even halfway through August, and we’ve already seen two X-class flares, and M-class flares every day; on 5 August, we saw, in addition to an X1.63 flare, two M-class flares and 9 less powerful C-class flares.

We’re certainly living in interesting solar times…

Much more HERE, including fancy graphs and charts.