Wow! What a Geomagnetic Storm!

Today morning I woke up to see this on the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center! Friends in high latitudes will be flooding X with wonderful displays of Aurora. Being at 11 degrees North, I will not be able to see any of them. For me the concern is a likely HF blackout.

As expected, Reverse Beacon Network was completely blank for the past 1 hour window from this region.

But PSK reporter has several reception reports from VU2OY on 80m and 40m. The farthest was 15,300 km from KD5M in Florida. That is fantastic for an 80m DX reception at around 5.15 am!

On 40m the farthest reception report was from G3PXT at 8,279 km, England. There were no reception reports on higher bands at all. In the images all the pink lines are 80m receptions and blue lines 40m, for those not familiar with PSK reporter. Not sure how this geomagnetic storm is going to progress over the coming hours to affect our local 40m morning nets.

NOAA has issued a Severe Geomagnetic Storm alert due to the arrival of a Coronal Mass Ejection from the Sun. This is after an X-class solar flare activity which was observed on 18 January 2026.

Complete loss of HF communication in polar regions has been predicted. There is an enhanced risk to space launches and satellites. High flying interests, mainly in the polar region should monitor the situation.

Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) is an eruption of solar material and magnetic fields. When they arrive at the Earth, a Geomagnetic Storm results. X has reported that “ISS crew sheltered, airlines rerouted flights, and operators monitored satellites and grids, but no outages occurred.”