Solar Flare & CME! Geomagnetic Storm July 12th 2026!

James Kaufman, World News Report today. Ladies and gentlemen, we've been in a light geomagnetic storm. We had discussed some incoming coronal mass ejections, although faint. We still did reach a G1 geomagnetic storm on the estimated planetary KP index. We also had six hours of a geomagnetic disturbance, you can see here in yellow. Now, not everything matches up, and I'll call out some problems with the information. We'll go ahead and quickly look at the Boulder situation. The Boulder KP Index has, it looks like, 12, 15 hours of a geomagnetic disturbance. The Fredericksburg KP Index has 6 hours of a geomagnetic disturbance. And our College Index has a G3 geomagnetic storm, followed by what looks like a G2 geomagnetic storm, followed by a G1 geomagnetic storm, and nothing else for the day. So, it's all over the boards here. Per our different KP indexes, we know that we regularly were to use the Estimated Planetary KP Index. It's the most updated one and the one that both NOAA and NASA use. It's a little bit more specific in its measurements. it measures by thirds instead of whole points this is actually a 4.67 here but since when you round that off it comes close to the five they're calling it a G1 geomagnetic storm that is the lightest geomagnetic storm that we were able to possibly have but we didn't make it that far All right. Also today, we had a, well, an M flare and a fairly strong C flare here. Take a look at those. It looks like it's about an M1.2. It's not extremely strong, but definitely created a coronal mass ejection. The good part about this is it was from one of the sunspots that's rolling around the outgoing limb and the coronal mass ejection. uh shot off to the right you know left facing earth right facing sun and we will take a look at that as well this is just a check of the estimated planetary KP index you can see we're doing 4.67 the minimum for geomagnetic storm and we had two disturbances this would be the minimum for disturbance which would be four but the 3.67s round up all right so here we go the AR 4485 is a beta gamma sunspot it's the one on the departing limb it's really around the limb by now so some of these might have been more powerful than what we're looking at the M flare the M 1.2 popped off Really, an M of 1.19 popped off and peaked around the 8.11 UTC time. Keep that in mind. And before that, we had a C 5.9, and that peaked around 1 UTC time, about 8 last night central. Today, we only had a 5% chance of having an X-class solar flare. A 25% chance of having that M-class solar flare, and that ship did sail. And a 75% chance of having a C-class solar flare. We had a few of those. And we're running a very weak baseline, a B5.46. Over to HMI Intensigram, you can see how calm our sun is really looking. We have three simple sunspots, earth-facing. 4482 looks like it might become more complex but none of them are active whatsoever 4485 has shown all of the activity and you can see it's mostly around the outgoing limb and this was taken much much earlier in the day so it's going to be even further around by now with that said you can also see that we have a sunspot group right here coming around that will probably be named by tomorrow This was just taken about an hour ago. SDO AIA-193 Angstroms at 2147 UTC time on the 12th. You can see that sunspot that we're going to have to name tomorrow. You can see the outgoing 4485 and the simple three sunspots here. There's a coronal hole, but it's on the south pole here, so it won't be too effective towards Earth. We do have the M explosion And I will show it to you live With that said, we're already here And there's our three simple sunspots here This is our troublemaker, 4485 Remember our timestamp was about 811 We can actually see, there's the flare there The flare popped off right around 811 Is when it peaked now if you weren't sure a little bigger than i thought it was it wasn't around the limb so we probably got a pretty good reading on it we don't think it'll be affecting earth because we have LASCO pulled up and you can see that the coronal ejection heads off and will miss earth with probably no glancing blow whatsoever but you can see that big pot right there Peaking at 811 UTC time Alright, over to LASCO You can see that CME headed off Towards the right facing sun We'll watch it a couple other times There it is right there A little bit easier to see At the beginning That happened right around Right past 811 That's going to be the M1.19 And you can see that it will miss Earth all right to our discover solar wind satellite this is where things don't make any sense uh we really had a small period here uh with pretty heavy plasma but was just very very short-lived you can see the temperature shoot up so it was real it also pushed the solar winds up solar winds probably peaked at just over 600 so we can find a little bit higher 630 646 We might find one higher, 651. So if you'll notice, this is way before what we're dealing with. This is today right here, this small area here. And what we saw were, so what is it? Well, weren't very strong. The other we were looking at was from the coronal hole. This is from a CME. And I've never seen this happen before, but the plasma is not following the line. I want you to watch that. Now, this right here, this is our geomagnetic disturbance. I want you all to remember that it takes about 40 minutes from what you're seeing here on the satellite for that weather to hit the Kp indexes on Earth. So you'd be looking at some of this through here. And very slow solar winds, very slow, very non-dense plasma. And then when you pass that time period up, which is from 12 to 3 central time here, there's really no sign before that or after that of any disturbances whatsoever. Now, we can see that the purple up here means that our shields are completely down. See all this purple? And that's very unhelpful. just about anything will make it pop when our shields are that far down the red baseline is our shields now this is positive this is our shields were tilted to the north which is much better cover than tilted to the south but once we get through that three hour period that's gonna be from about one to three one to four then watch the orange dot it doesn't follow the line i've never seen this before but we do see plasma up to about 14 i was able to find it around 14 here 13 i might not be able to get it back let me uh last time i had to do that to get it back and you can see that the line is nowhere near this but that is space weather plasma just barely 10 being the space where the threshold I saw 14 in there somewhere but again this is not following the line whatsoever I've never seen it see it drop way down to 4.24 the line's up here and let's see if I can grab that 14 well no matter this is after after the Kp index read that we were going to be in a geomagnetic storm And remember, it takes at least 40 minutes for this weather to hit the Kp indexes or Earth after it hits the satellite, which is a million miles up in the range 0.1, right between Earth and the sun. And I did get it. There it is, 14.1. We got it. So, that is the only space weather that I see, and that's at least an hour and a half past when they claimed we had a geomagnetic storm. Remember, we had a geomagnetic disturbance chart before that, but with plasma at 3 and 4 and solar winds at 530? Now, granted, up here, purple, shields are completely down. That really means a lot. So, this doesn't make any sense. The Kp-indexes do not match our Discover or our ACE satellite we're about to take a look at. All right, so we can see the one or two dots that go above the 10 centimeters cubed right here, and that's it for the day. Nothing else going on. That's the same one I just pointed to. And if you trace it down, it's not from 10 to 15 UTC time, but it's quite a bit past that. From 10 to 15 UTC time, when they say that we're in a geomagnetic storm, plasma doesn't break the threshold. And solar winds are very calm at around 550. So this is the first time I've seen it not make sense. i.e., the satellites are giving us different information than the ground KP indexes. You can see that temperature's dropping off here, so it's getting calmer and calmer. Temperature was way up here, and I can't explain that either because solar winds are under 600 kilometers. They did go to 630, I guess we saw, and plasma's down here at 2 and 3. this is one right here so very hard to say now again our shields are completely down to here to here they looked much worse off on Discover than they do ACE here especially during this this area here but again this is when they said that we had a geomagnetic storm and this is when they said we had a geomagnetic disturbance and nothing on either satellite indicates that is the case believe it or not there was a time when i just started doing this for YouTube that everything matched up to a T so we have our departing sunspot four five we have our three simple sunspots i'll tell you this one looks like it was becoming more complex it's still in play and you can plainly see there's a big sunspot coming around right below right below central disc it looks like it looks like this was taken today at 2100 utc time it was taken about three o'clock um let's see actually at four o'clock so this is brand new information this may or may not be named tomorrow but it most probably will and this might become more complex tomorrow as well This is SDO HMI Magnetogram. Shows you the negative and positive umbrae in different sunspots. White is positive. Black is negative. All right. taken at 706 this morning. Central time here in the U.S. You can already see the activity in the sunspot coming around the limb. Obviously, it's come much further around. This is the sunspot that I think is going to be at least beta gamma by tomorrow and should be in play and this is our departing buddy again this was taken at 7 0 6 this morning central time this is soho at 284 angstroms and well taking a look at what's going on right now i told you this is one of our watch dates it'll be tomorrow and the next day there so that's going to be the 13th, 14th and maybe the 15th. Why am I calling this a watch date? Well there's a couple different reasons uh first we have a geomagnetic connection of Mercury in front of us that's between the sun and earth and then the moon's going to swing in between the two we have a large the largest planet in our solar system biggest mass almost directly opposite not quite but almost we also have a geomagnetic connection to Neptune we're going on to the scary or busy side of the solar system again i run it again next three days will be earthquake volcano watch days and maybe solar watch days as well that sunspot coming around does look active but you can see that moon is a big player in this so i would guess that the 13th, 14th and 15th uh we're going to see an uptick in earthquake activity perhaps volcanic and solar activity as well all right folks uh uh if you made it all the way let me know in the comments below i appreciate you and well please give us a thumbs up and uh hey i bet i'm the only one that caught that well nothing worked out as far as the actual satellite data versus the kp indexes they call those the dummy lights like in the car the dummy lights so the actual data does not match the dummy lights it's always important to know and to see god bless guys you'll have a wonderful evening and hopefully we'll see out tonight for the live remember anything's possible bizarro world