Polar Vortex, Solar Flare, a Winter Salad of Doom

Hey, this is fun–as the northern hemisphere shuddered in the throes of the icy grip of the Polar Vortex, the Sun decided to remind us all who is really the real big cheese in this solar system and threw an X-class flare our way! SpaceWeather.com reports: “Giant sunspot AR1944 erupted on Jan 7th at approximately 1832 UT, producing a powerful X1-class solar flare. First-look coronagraph images from the STEREO-Ahead spacecraft appear to show a coronal mass ejection (CME) emerging from the blast site. If so, the CME is almost certainly heading for Earth.” The X-Flare won’t cook us or anything, but it’s worth notice, because they can be “major events that can trigger planet-wide radio blackouts and long-lasting radiation storms.”[SpaceWeather.com]