13 CMEs In 4 Days - The Sun Is Going Off!

I have been studying solar activity for almost 20 years, and I can’t recall ever having seen a week during which so many CMEs erupted from our star. I have included a link to a real time GIF movie hosted by soho in which you can see at least 13 distinct CMEs erupting over the period from July 1st to today, July 5th.

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/LATEST/current_c2.gif

(if you have a slower connection, you can view this smaller version : http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/LATEST/current_c2small.gif )

In particular, check out the one released at approximately 14:48 on July 4th, upper right hand side of the screen. Instead of the typical cloud-like burst, it almost looks like a intensified pulse from some kind of beam weapon (no, I am NOT even suggesting it is, simply trying to make some kind of analogy) – very impressive. There is another one on July 5th towards the bottom left hand side in the image.

It definitely appears as if our sun is waking from it’s unusual 13 year slumber – unusual because normally the sun is dormant for 11 years, active for 11 years, dormant for – you get the point. So we are a little overdue for it to “wake up.”

There is also a much higher percentage chance for X-class flares today than normal – 25%. Typically, even with a large sunspot, the percentage chance is between 5-10%.

(Information from http://www.spaceweather.com/ and http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/)