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Activity is getting started on the Sebec Lake cam: http://sebeclake.net/camera_2.html Typical green arc is slowly brightening and climbing higher. Hopefully a nice substorm erupts.

Reached G4 now.

Yeah. Down here, I've got that damn storm by Albany which is spewing a nice mass of clouds this way. Not to mention it's already 95% overcast to begin with.

Find clear sky. This could easily hit G4...this solar wind stream is absolutely perfect and about as juicy as it gets.

That disappointing sunspot from a few days ago decided to really rub salt in the wounds. This backside CME looks straight out of 2003.

The guy who has insulted the intellect of more people here than anyone else, even attacked Dave, has the balls to suggest he be responded to with more tact, haha. The only crusade was from you. You have a flimsy understanding of the Kp index and used it to suggest we weren't missing anything when the realtime data made it quite clear that we were. There is literally nothing else to discuss about this.

Yeah this is going to be a dud. The current solar wind isn't even good for Santa. Bummer.

You are one weird dude. I said we were missing out because the timing was off and we were missing out on what would easily reach G2 or better. Your "explanation" was evaded because the complex mechanics behind the weakness in the auroral oval on the daylight side of the earth, and premature evaluations of the Kp, were both rather irrelevant.

I see.

By miss, I mean be on the wrong side of the planet. The Kp index tells you only what you've missed over the last 3 hours. It's useless as an indicator of present or future activity.

lol, just saw it arrived a few hours ago. Bz is more than -20 so we're missing a great show. Odds of it staying that way for the next 14 hours are 0.01%.

No moon tonight, either. All you really need is this link. That dip to near -20bz would have been great had it lasted until dark. This is the front end of a coronal hole that supposedly has a weak CME entangled in it. Should see a sudden jump in the solar wind speed at some point if true. http://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/ace-mag-24-hour.gif

Conditions are currently prime for a G2, fyi.

Pretty potent event this afternoon... reached G3. Not much going on now.

Just noticed we missed a potent G3 this evening by a few hours. Nice negative Bz flipped as the sun set. Some residual activity still ongoing right now along the horizon in a very low greenish arc.

Yep. Nice solid G2. Looks like a couple nice coronal holes coming as well.

Perfectly positioned megaspot 2473 spewed a nice full halo CME today during a long duration M1 flare. Definitely going to be some good action around the 30th.

Current activity level is no match for the near full moon. The hazy cirrus clouds aren't helping either. Moon shouldn't be a problem after midnight. The sebec lake cam looks like daylight... guess they set the exposure for moonless nights.

18bt/-17bz is pretty decent. Seems stable and becoming gradually more intense. I have a real hard time buying G4 but G3 is probably a good bet. Southward extent of the oval will probably be reduced regardless of IMF values.

Slow moving or not, it packed a decent punch. Bz has been stable in the -15 to -18 range and a G2 is in progress. Nice glow to the north through gaps in the clouds, but nothing I'm standing outside for.

Two CME's are enroute currently. Both are full halo's, but slow moving and not impressive. However, anytime you get two fired back-to-back there is a possibility of enhanced activity. This one should be of decent duration and will probably peak at a G2 on Saturday'ish.

What a glorious sunspot 2447 is. Couldn't be in a more perfect position... lets hope the M2 flare produced a CME.

These types of events are not a dense cloud of plasma like a CME, they are basically just push brooms that gather things in front of them. You can see this if you look at the graphs... a pronounced spike in density, followed by an increase in the IMF, and then you get into the high speed wind stream. Once you're into that stream (like we are now), the Bt falls to background levels and so even with a 100% south Bz, it's over. This one was pretty good... off the charts density, the Bt peaked near 40 and Bz dipped to -25. That would have been pretty epic BUT it wasn't sustained. Not much will happen when the IMF graph looks like the EKG of a hummingbird.

Some super expensive cameras have lenses capable of realtime video. This one really shows the rapid movement you can get further north. One of my favorites.

Nobody missed anything. Looking at the number of stars in that photo tells me it's a looong exposure or shot with a very high iso. The naked eye probably would have strained to see an imperceptible glow right along the horizon. Yawn. Maybe I'm in the minority, but if I can't see it I really don't care. I don't see the point of taking pictures of a black sky so you can post it and make people think they missed something awesome.