Forecasters said the stormy weather could disrupt satellite communications and poses a threat to power grids on Earth.

The active Sun also presents a nice opportunity for anyone to view sunspots, though safe viewing techniques must be employed to prevent eye damage.

The first storm of charged particles was unleashed by a dark region on the solar surface called Sunspot 484. The huge spot, about the size of Jupiter’s surface, has been growing for several days and has rotated into a position that now points squarely at Earth.

Another giant sunspot is brewing and more storms could be generated.

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“Natural Radio” describes naturally-occurring electromagnetic (radio) signals emanating from lightning storms, aurora (The Northern and Southern Lights), and most importantly, the Earth’s magnetic-field (the Magnetosphere).

This is a presentation of Earth’s natural radio emissions that occur in the extremely-low-frequency to very-low-frequency (ELF-VLF) radio spectrum–specifically, at AUDIO frequencies between approximately 100 to 10,000 cycles-per second (0.1 – 10 kHz).

Unlike sound waves which are vibrations of air molecules that our ears are sensitive to, natural radio waves as received at ground-level are vibrations of electric and magnetic energy (electromagnetic waves) which–though occurring at the same frequencies as sound–cannot be listened to without an audio-frequency ELF-VLF radio receiver to convert the natural radio signals directly into the same sound frequencies. Another amazing realm of nature is thus ready to be explored and observed.

Naturally-occurring VLF radio emissions are being studied both via ground-based receiving systems as well as orbiting spacecraft receivers such as the POLAR spacecraft. Much of these phenomena begin as plasma waves in Earth’s magnetosphere. Please check out the U. Iowa Plasma Wave Group links toward the bottom of this page for much more information. [more info, and the file, on the site]