Space Weather Update April 4th 2026!

James Kaufman, World News Report today. Ladies and gentlemen, we are just coming out of a long-term, almost 36-hour geomagnetic storm, and we've just got our first signs of, well, no geomagnetic activity occurring on planet Earth. We're looking at our estimated planetary KP index here. Between 1 and 4 central time, we fell back into a geomagnetic disturbance. We have seen a G1 geomagnetic storm today, a KP1, really a KP5.33, getting very close to KP2. Yesterday, we saw KP2s, KP1s, KP3s, etc. Most of our KP indexes have calmed down. we might have a small break small break based on what you'll see in just a moment all right jumping over to our GOES X-ray flux our GOES and this can be our GOES 19 satellite over at 22,300 miles above earth we've had three flares four flares today alone well we just had one at the end of the day they're very strong C-flare as well we'll take a look at that but that's going to push a lot of plasma towards earth in the next 72 hours okay this was a big day and you're you're probably saying oh they're just M-flares James well that'd be great if we had any type of atmosphere whatsoever left which we don't i wanted to kind of let y'all see what we were still exploding from it was the X-flare here not a very strong X-flare but it was also a one-two punch with a coronal hole earth facing for over 72 hours so we have been suffering from that combination and that's almost been a three-day event you want to talk about getting bad it's about to get real bad. Again, look today. One, two, three, four M flares and a very strong C flare all out of the same complex sunspot, all producing a CME or coronal mass ejection inbound towards Earth. All right, taking a look at this mess. As the day started, we had an M 7.6 or 7.55 the strongest flare we've seen in 72 hours and we've had again three additional flares since then we'll know if they'll all be listed but they're all coming from AR 4409 there's the M1.7 and M1.3 and M1 they're actually all listed we have a 20% chance of an X-class solar flare, a 55% chance of an M-class solar flare, and a, well, 99% chance of a C-class solar flare running at a very, very low baseline. Very low baseline for these conditions with a lot of Earth-facing sunspots running a B5.76 baseline flare. Wow. Over to HMI Intensigram 4409 is staring us down, staring us down directly earth-facing. 4408 could actually become much more complex, and it looks like it wants to. And we have other sunspots. 4405 used to be the dastardly deed, and it has recovered since then. All in all, it looks like we have eight sunspots Earth-facing currently. All right, taking a look at LASCO C2 and Core 1, we don't ever see our comet come into the trajectory here. Very, very strange. I have checked it. Taking a look at our GOES proton flux, we're coming out of what almost was a solar storm. It was a polar absorption event, and that has actually dissipated as well. And that proton line is coming down from the space weather warning threshold. Taking a look at Lasco C3, see our comet coming in for what might be its last showing. We'll see if it makes it around the sun or not. At this point, we just don't know. It did not light up like I thought it would, at least. It was, well, a little show. All hype. Over to our D-Region Absorption Prediction Center. Well, we've been through it today. You can see I was just out for the launch. And as you all know, all the M-Flares and the stronger C-Flares as well, which you all are seeing throughout the day here. So it's been active and ongoing, and we've gotten plenty of radiation, just enough, right? Just enough, as always. Taking a look at DSCOVR all-time solar wind satellite, well, it looks like plasma has been very, very gentle all day long, about one to two centimeters cubed, nothing, right? It's only winds going from about 650 and peak around 675 perhaps, something like that, maybe 680, and going down ever since then. We've actually had our shields basically up and then down all day. When red goes under the zero line, our shields are down, but they've had that northern tilt. I see the blue here, which has kept us out of trouble here, and temperatures have stayed normal to mild. Now, I was going to pull it, and all of a sudden, we had this onslaught of plasma. It is 10 p.m. Central right now, and that's a pretty big onslaught of plasma over the space weather threshold. So I guess we're going back into a special situation, either a disturbance or a storm of some sort. But I wanted y'all to see that happen as it occurred. It's at 11.77 and higher than that right there as we cover this live. God bless. Please share, subscribe, always remember. Anything's possible. It was all over the world.