How bad is propagation?

[Dennis W1UE]

 I thought I'd share a few observations from the Skimmer that's currently at my place.  

Daily spot counts for RBN node W1UE have been roughly 60k.  In the last 24 hours, only 29K spots have been made.  I  saw Europeans spotted on 80m last night, but other than those, I've seen a few spots on 20m for CT and EA.  Nothing else from Europe.

This includes FT8 and WSPR.  This is pretty amazing.

Dennis W1UE

[David G. McGaw]

Near total blackout here in NH.  Last night, could hear a weak CHU on 3.330 and 7.850 and very weak WWV on 20 and 25.  This morning, nothing!  CHU NEVER disappears here.

73,

David N1HAC

On 5/11/24 7:50 AM, Dennis W1UE wrote:

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[Ed WX2R]

WWV was barely audible in south Florida on 10.000 Mhz from midnight UTC until around 0200. No other frequencies heard.

On AM, only WBT was barely audible here...nothing from the usual suspects in New York, Boston and New Orleans.

Ed

WX2R

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[Patricia Reiff]

The unusual thing about this storm is that the input has been at very high levels continuously for ~18 HOURS which is unprecedented in my ~50 years of observations.

This I think now exceeds the halloween storm of 2003 and the March 1989 storm in continuous activity.  I’m not sure about the IGY storm in 1956...

Max IMF was 70 nT but now has "calmed down" to less than 30.  

The proton flux is also still very high.  When the ISS flies poleward of the main aurora, they are in open field lines and directly exposed to that flux.  I trust they took some evasive action.  I have not heard of any major power outages (someone said there was a power outage in Atlanta but I don’t know if that is confirmed).  Fortunately the power companies "brown down" their transmission lines during major storms so that they don’t blow their transformers again. 

It would be interesting to make a radio blackout map of the US…  

A few years ago we made a planetarium show "Force 5" which talked about the Force 5 hurricanes, tornadoes and space storms.  This is the longest E5 storm I remember.

You can watch it on our youtube channel:  http://eplanetarium.com/shows/ddome/rice/force_five/

Note most storms are named after the dates (Hallowe’en, etc), but Kent Tobiska suggests naming this one after a young woman scientist Jenn Gannon who passed away recently.  

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[Phil Erickson]

Hi all,

  We at Haystack strongly support the Gannon Storm as a tribute to our friend, colleague, and fantastic collaborator Jenn.  Before leaving CPI for Goddard, she installed a US magnetometer array (MagStar; magstar.cpi.com) which stretches down the US latitudes, including an installation at our observatory.

  Last night at 0200 UTC, Jenn's instrument saw a 1000 nT delta H, which is the largest value since its installation.  This is right about the time that many up and down the East coast saw aurorae.  From the real time trace, I'm putting it below as a tribute to her efforts.

Best

Phil

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[Pete Smith N4ZR]

That's certainly consistent with current RBN reporting:

Nothing going on to speak of on the night side either

73, Pete N4ZR

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[Phil Erickson]

Hi all,

  Sorry - I was moving fast and didn't mean to confuse anyone on this list who doesn't look often at magnetometer plots.  The "H" in my "delta H" was the horizontal magnetic field; that's on the plot Y axis.  Classic right hand rule tells you that wherever H is maximum negative, you're under the westward auroral electrojet.  

Best

Phil

[Gerald Creager]

Phil

My initial thought on a 100 nT Delta H was "Holy ****". literally. This storm is going to provide PhD fodder for a good number of graduate students.

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[Phil Erickson]

Hi Gerry,

  Correction: that was a 1000 (one thousand) nT horizontal bay, not 100.  We were very auroral!

73

Phil W1PJE

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[Gerald Creager]

And that was a pre-caffeine typo on my part. Here in Colorado Springs, we had a surprise clear sky and went looking for aurorae. We did see some green glow modulating just above the horizon but nothing too spectacular. 

Maj Gerry Creager
Deputy Senior Program Manager. Health Services
Civil Air Patrol, U.S. Air Force Auxiliary
(M) 979.229.5301
GoCivilAirPatrol.com
Volunteers serving America's communities, saving lives, and shapin
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[Phil Erickson]

Hi Kent,

  That is a tremendous amount of information and I’m very impressed that luck had you making a key measurement in exactly the right place and time.  I remember well the chapter that you and Chris Mertens wrote on ionizing radiation hazards for high altitude aircraft within the Wiley space weather volume that Anthea Coster, Lou Lanzerotti, and I edited a few years back.  (Recommended reading for others on this list.)

  I will try to send some more magnetic mid-latitude information as follow up, once I work out some software issues.  The existence of data from the entire MagStar array - not just one station - allows the classic stack plot H and Z technique to see where the auroral currents were located, similar to what’s done routinely with the Canadian CARISMA magnetometer chains.  Jenn’s work allows us to do that now for even this superstorm level - although at some points it is possible that even an array stretching to Florida and Texas might not be enough, given the reports of aurora visible in Puerto Rico and Chile.

Cheers

Phil

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On Sun, May 12, 2024 at 07:35 Dan Baker <Dan....@lasp.colorado.edu> wrote:

Hi Kent

 

Thanks for all the great info! This is quite a bell-ringer and you had a ringside seat.

 

Best wishes

Dan

 

 

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Moog-BRE Endowed Chair of Space Sciences

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Professor, Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences

Professor, Department of Physics

 

 

 

 

From: W. Kent Tobiska <ktob...@spacewx.com>
Date: Sunday, May 12, 2024 at 1:25 AM
To: Phil Erickson <phil.e...@gmail.com>
Cc: ham...@googlegroups.com <ham...@googlegroups.com>, Dan Baker <Dan....@lasp.colorado.edu>, Michael Kirk <michael...@nasa.gov>, Kent Tobiska <ktob...@spacenvironment.net>, Edgar A. Bering <eabe...@uh.edu>, Mike Stills <ms86...@alum.villanova.edu>, Michael Stills <msti...@villanova.edu>, Delores Knipp <delore...@colorado.edu>, William Murtagh <william...@noaa.gov>, Christopher (LARC-E303) Mertens <christophe...@nasa.gov>, Hazel Affiliate <hazel...@noaa.gov>, Tamara Dickinson <tammydic...@yahoo.com>, Seth Jonas <seth....@lmco.com>, Meehan, Ostp <jennifer...@ostp.eop.gov>, Peggy Shea <ss...@msn.com>, Joe Minow <joseph....@nasa.gov>
Subject: Re: [HamSCI] How bad is propagation? - some more events in the memorial to Jenn Gannon

Hi Phil,

 

A very fascinating overview of the Gannon Superstorm 2024 event looking at Jenn’s Magstar data. I have taken the liberty of adding some more material in this conversation as, I am sure, will become a major studied event.

 

I had the serendipitous opportunity to be on the UAL 990 (Boeing 777-200) flight from San Francisco to Paris during the event on the evening of last Friday, May 10. This flight normally goes very high latitude over Canada’s Hudson Bay, across Greenland, and down to Paris flying at 37,000 - 40,000 ft and reaching latitudes to >70N geographic. We were flying SET’s ARMAS radiation detector and, for the first time I believe, we were making dose measurements above 30,000 ft on a high latitude CONUS route during a G5 event.

 

At the time of your 1000 nT dH depression, we were around 35,000 ft over Toronto of around 43 geographic latitude. You can see from our quicklook real-time photo, we were having major dose rates of up to 20 micro Sv/hour, well above the GCR background of 6 micro Sv/hour as run by NAIRAS climatology without SEPs or trapped particles prior to the flight.

Attached below are a couple poor quality photos taken from the exit door window (with 6 inches wide viewing and curved optical plastic) about an hour or so later when we were just south of Nova Scotia (lights visible) at 36,000 ft. The seasoned pilots, one of whom lives in Alaska, told me after the flight that it was the most intense auroral display he has ever seen during the flight. He showed me his personal pictures of brilliant streaming “starburst” aurora directly over the plane taken from the cockpit overhead window.

 

 

This was during a time when there appeared to be a Forbush decrease (not sure - just grabbed a picture) in this historic G5 event.

 

 

A note here: it appears that air traffic control (ATC) got this one right! Prior to departure a UAL ops person privately told me that the flights from US to Europe were being diverted to lower latitudes because of poor radio communications. Our flight path really represented that. The penalty for lower latitudes and lower altitudes was actually only an added half hour! This is because the plane took advantage of a very strong tailwind as noted by the pilots to the passengers. An image of the jet stream is below and, at one point, our ground speed was almost 700 mph (1111 kph!)

 

 

I should note that in addition to the MagStar data that Jenn originally set up, which you showed in your conversation below, we had just had a discussion on the Space Weather Advisory Group the week before Space Weather Week. Our findings and recommendations for the aviation sector were summarized at SWW but Jenn was a very significant contributor to the aviation section. That report will be published by SWAG later this summer but throughout the report which will go to the agencies and Congress, Jenn made significant contributions. 

 

Bottom line is that the Gannon Superstorm of 2024 was a significant event and will certainly be discussed for decades - certainly a fitting tribute to Jenn as a leading international space weather physicist who will be sorely missed with her untimely passing.

 

Thanks,

Kent

Shea and Smart cutoff ridigities during the storm.

 

Last aurora image credit either Anthony DeStefano or Joe Minow - take over Alabama during the Gannon Superstorm 2024 event.

 

Sent from my iPad

On May 11, 2024, at 4:04 PM, Phil Erickson <phil.e...@gmail.com> wrote:



Hi all,

 

  We at Haystack strongly support the Gannon Storm as a tribute to our friend, colleague, and fantastic collaborator Jenn.  Before leaving CPI for Goddard, she installed a US magnetometer array (MagStar; magstar.cpi.com) which stretches down the US latitudes, including an installation at our observatory.

 

  Last night at 0200 UTC, Jenn's instrument saw a 1000 nT delta H, which is the largest value since its installation.  This is right about the time that many up and down the East coast saw aurorae.  From the real time trace, I'm putting it below as a tribute to her efforts.

 

Best

Phil

 

 

On Sat, May 11, 2024 at 9:26 AM Patricia Reiff <eplane...@gmail.com> wrote:

The unusual thing about this storm is that the input has been at very high levels continuously for ~18 HOURS which is unprecedented in my ~50 years of observations.

This I think now exceeds the halloween storm of 2003 and the March 1989 storm in continuous activity.  I’m not sure about the IGY storm in 1956...

 

Max IMF was 70 nT but now has "calmed down" to less than 30.  

The proton flux is also still very high.  When the ISS flies poleward of the main aurora, they are in open field lines and directly exposed to that flux.  I trust they took some evasive action.  I have not heard of any major power outages (someone said there was a power outage in Atlanta but I don’t know if that is confirmed).  Fortunately the power companies "brown down" their transmission lines during major storms so that they don’t blow their transformers again. 

 

It would be interesting to make a radio blackout map of the US…  

 

A few years ago we made a planetarium show "Force 5" which talked about the Force 5 hurricanes, tornadoes and space storms.  This is the longest E5 storm I remember.

You can watch it on our youtube channel:  http://eplanetarium.com/shows/ddome/rice/force_five/

 

Note most storms are named after the dates (Hallowe’en, etc), but Kent Tobiska suggests naming this one after a young woman scientist Jenn Gannon who passed away recently.