Well...keep in mind almost all of these photos are 1-4 second exposures. Modern smartphones automatically go into "night shot mode" unless you specify otherwise. Naked eye was of course much dimmer than the photos.
100% agree. Plenty of time at/near solar max remains. And it doesn't have to be a Carrington-level event to get us with great auroral activity. Heck...even a series of modest M-flares can have a cumulative effect larger than a single X flare. So many variables! Tough enough with Earth weather forecasting. Solar weather......no thanks on having that as a profession!
Yeah - @SomeguyfromTakomaPark said - it'll likely be limited to G1 to G2 level "storming" tonight. Last night was definitely the show. Now we turn our eyes back to the sun for more activity. The solar disk looks a bit more quiet right now - but that can change in a hurry!
Similar to how we all salivate and wait for a 30+ inch snowstorm...a well timed series of strong flares all with CMEs (the May event I think was a bunch of M-class flares in quick succession) would be a good bet for having a huge storm. It's obviously more complicated (Bz has to be tipped to the south I believe) but the basic building blocks is we want a HUGE CME or better yet a series of them. Often times the first CME will "clear out" space ahead of it leading to the subsequent CMEs (even if weaker) overperforming. It's rare - but if there was ever a time during the sun's 11 year cycle to watch - it's now.
I don't think it's unreasonable to say there could be more solar storms of this magnitude before this solar cycle winds down. It seems like for years all of the sunspots would hurl CMEs on the farside only - our "luck" has changed seemingly. While there hasn't been prolific amounts of high M or X flares - there have been a few very well timed ones.
It has definitely died off a bit. It will likely ebb and flow - HUGE thanks to @WxUSAF - as soon as I saw your picture I went out. Had I been a few minutes slower I likely would have missed that first surge.
Tomorrow night seems like the best shot. Think that by Friday night the storm will have subsided unless more activity erupts. Space weather is so fickle, though.
Let's hope the storm onset and peak holds off until we are well after dark tomorrow evening. Would suck to waste daylight hours on Kp7-9 values.
Another X-class flare. But this one looks (at least preliminarily) to be more impulsive. Probably a lower chance of a CME with this one. But who knows. The existing CME from yesterday is still coming.
Heck...maybe out seasons are shifting a bit. We all have mentioned that winter seems to start later and later but hang on later as well...fitting that hurricane season would follow that pattern.
The weather just likes making a mockery out of us amateur forecasters and such. If I tell my friends 2-4 inches of snow, it will either be nothing or 6+...if I tell them thunderstorms, they'll all miss. Always the same. We have a pretty toxic hobby