The Sun had its most powerful solar flare in 7 years, and at the same time, the United States experienced a large-scale cellular outage.

The X6.3 flare peaked on Friday (02/23/24) at 00:34 Kyiv time. ‼️ This is currently the strongest solar flare of the 25th solar cycle and the most powerful since the great solar storms of September 2017.

ℹ️  It is important to know that the giant sunspot AR3590 does not stop! In just 23 hours from February 21 to February 22, three powerful X-class solar flares (X1.9, X1.7, and X6.3) occurred in this active region. This is the 5th X-class solar flare in February!

‼️  February continues and the sunspot continues to move directly across the Earth.

However, the SOHO coronagraphs have not detected any coronal mass ejections (CMEs) from this area. Sometimes this happens. Flares can occur without CMEs, and CMEs can occur without flares.

‼️ However, the extreme ultraviolet radiation from each flare ionized the upper part of the Earth's atmosphere, causing shortwave radio communications to be disabled over:
✅ Hawaii (late February 21 and late February 22)
✅ Australia (early February 22).
❗️ Mariners and radio amateurs in these areas may have noticed a loss of signal at all frequencies below 30 MHz.

Interesting fact! The problems with mobile communication in North America are not related to these flares.

Solar flares only affect radio waves (1-30 MHz or so), which depend on the ionosphere to reflect back to Earth for communication. During flares, radio waves are not reflected, but absorbed on the Earth's day side. And cell phones not only do not need the ionosphere to function, but also operate at frequencies 300 times higher than the radio waves affected by solar flares.

ℹ️ But coronal mass ejections (CMEs) from the Sun can create a complete blackout on our planet.