Massive solar storm causes communications blackouts

The sun unleashed two huge flares early Wednesday, one day after a NASA observatory captured a dramatic photo of a separate solar flare.

The sun unleashed two huge flares early Wednesday, one day after a NASA observatory captured a dramatic photo of a separate solar flare.

The back-to-back eruptions included the strongest of the year so far, and have reportedly caused shortwave radio blackouts on at least five continents. The outbursts this week may be signaling that the sun is ramping up its activity.

Wednesday’s solar storm peaked around 4:25 a.m. ET, when the sun fired off a huge X-class flare, hurling streams of plasma and charged particles into the cosmos.

“Flares of this magnitude are not frequent,” officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center wrote in a summary of the event.

Solar flares are categorized by strength into five classes. The smallest and weakest flares are A-class storms, followed by B-class, C-class, M-class and the most powerful, X-class. Each letter represents a 10-fold increase in energy released by the sun over the previous class, according to NASA.