We Have a Plan for That

As I was sitting down to dinner this evening my phone signalled an alert from the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center, the subject line read WARNING: Geomagnetic Sudden Impulse expected. A quick review of the message contents indicated that a GSI was expected to hit sometime from 15 to 90 minutes later.

As I was looking at the message from NOAA my wife asked what the alert was. The expression on her face when I told her about the alert seemed like an invitation for a more in-depth explanation. Based on my limited knowledge of the space sciences my spiel went something like this.

When a solar flare is discharged from the sun it produces a coronal mass ejection (CME). A CME is comprised of plasma and magnetic fields and when expelled from the sun they travel outward at varying speeds. When the earth isn’t in the path of a CME there is little to worry about and the mass shoots off harmlessly into space, but sometimes earth zigs when it should have zagged and the CME is on a collision course with our planet. This causes a geomagnetic storm that can have a serious impact on the earth’s magnetosphere.

It was at this point in the explanation that my wife began to give me that look, some of you will know the one I mean. The look that says ‘you’re lucky your handsome because you are a serious nerd Mr. Murphy’.

Oh crap I was losing my audience already, time to make this real for her. I began to delve into the details of the Carrington event of September 1859 when a solar flare destroyed the telegraph network in the US. It even caused fires and electrocuted telegraph operators. She was still giving me the look, it was time to up my game.

With a determination to win my lovely spouse over, I continued by telling her about the March 1989 solar flare that caused widespread power outages in Quebec while relating the what-ifs should a similar event occur today. “With our growing dependence on electronics, the internet, cellular data and information sharing another Carrington or even a Quebec event could cause the biggest emergency we’ve ever seen” I told her. She looked at me and with a beautiful smile she replied “That’s why I keep you around Mr. Murphy, you’ll have a plan for that sort of thing”.

If your organization isn’t planning for a long term power outage, a communications collapse and a loss of all electronic data then you’re not planning for a CME. If you’d like to become more resilient to the effects of CME’s or any of the other hundred or so threats out there give us a call because we have a plan for that.