Solar Flares

Could a Solar Flare cause a blackout across the United States? Listen and decide for yourself.

Transcript

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Welcome to Kitts Myths and Mysteries. Listened to in all 50 states and 39 countries. Stories from a world you thought you knew. Today's podcast is a little on the personal side. I grew up in the tiny town of Cupertino, California. Well, it was little when I was a kid. Anyway, we had a number of earthquakes, and the word was that the big one would take out San Francisco. About 30 years ago, I moved to Ashland, Oregon, and all the talk was about the Cascadian subduction zone quake that would take out the coast from Washington State south 700 miles to different portions of the California coast. But the big one probably will not be an earthquake at all. I was doing some research for my latest book and discovered that the date that Oregon became a state, 1859, was also the date a solar flare struck the Earth. The effect was worldwide. In Oregon, telegraph service between Portland and Oregon City began in 1855, Corvallis, Oregon in 1856, and the same year for Jacksonville. On September 2nd, 1859, an incredible storm of charged particles sent by the sun slammed into the Earth's atmosphere, overpowered it, and caused havoc on the ground. Telegraph wires and high-tech stuff of the time suddenly shorted out in the United States and in Europe, igniting widespread fires. Colorful auroras, normally visible only in polar regions, were seen as far south as Cuba and Hawaii. Earth's magnetic field normally protects the surface of the planet from some storms anyway. In 1859, the planet's defenses were totally overwhelmed. Over the past decades, similar but less powerful storms have likewise busted through, giving scientists insight into what will eventually happen again. And the outlook is not rosy. The solar storm of 1859 was three times more powerful than the one that cut power to an entire Canadian province in 1989. Experts say if it happened today, and it could, the result would be unthinkable. Those telegraph connections I mentioned in Portland, Oregon, and Oregon City Corvallis and Jacksonville were all fried. The Portland telegraph station reportedly caught on fire. Also, trains across the state came to a halt when the tracks were electrified. What's commonly referred to as a northern light, or the aurora borealis, could be seen from anywhere in the United States and appeared not just in the sky, but for many it could be seen near the ground. A large CME, which emanates from the sun, is a low frequency event. To have an impact on anything it requires a long antenna. Our power lines are the perfect antenna for receiving this energy. The big issue is that this can destroy the large transformers. There are no spares of these, and it takes years to get a new one built. There is a precedent for concern. In 1859, a large CME caused power surges in telegraph wires strong enough to start fires and stations. Known as the Carrington event, it caused minor damage because we really had no electrical infrastructure at the time. Back in 1859, our electro technology was in its infancy. But what if we were hit by that same size flare today? And what are the chances? There was a similar solar flare sixty two years later in 1921, then 91 years later in 2012, then another in 2017, and then there was a solar flare that just missed the Earth, and that was April 2021. So who knows when the next one's going to hit? This is Kit Crumb. Be sure to listen to the next story from a world you thought you knew.