It's been one year since the most intense solar storm in decades

I'll never forget the night of May 10, 2024. I remember having dinner with a friend and talking about the potential of seeing the northern lights in Northeast Ohio, a conversation that I had never had before or even thought was possible. It sounded unlikely, but earlier that week, the possibility was brought to my attention when I wrote one of my first-ever stories highlighting space weather triggered by the sun.

As a meteorologist, space weather wasn't something I talked about often, but the more I was learning that week, the more I became fascinated with how powerful solar flares from sunspot clusters almost 93 million miles (149.60 million kilometers) away could impact us here on Earth. When the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) issued a geomagnetic storm watch for a pretty powerful solar event on Mother's Day Weekend and I was asked to report on it, I had no idea I would be writing about a geomagnetic storm that would make history.

The May 2024 solar storm, also known as the Gannon storm or Mother's Day solar storm, is now ranked by NOAA as one of the most memorable solar events in history, and potentially the most powerful documented this century. It included a parade of powerful solar flares between May 8-11, 2024, originating from a beastly sunspot group that measured 17 times wider than Earth's diameter. According to NOAA, during this time frame, there were at least eight coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which are giant blasts made up of magnetic field and plasma, that targeted Earth. This resulted in the creation of extreme geomagnetic storm (G5) conditions, the highest on NOAA's space weather scale.

"The Gannon storm was a spectacular event in the sense that so many people got to see the aurora, especially those living in areas that don't typically see it," Mike Cook, Space Weather Lead at MITRE Corporation, told Space.com. "But, beyond that, it was a reminder that our sun is capable of producing these very disruptive events that can impact our critical infrastructure."

While photos of the northern lights around the world lit up social media and news headlines, it also brought attention to the impacts a storm of this magnitude can have on our planet and human civilization. Scientists and forecasters at NOAA's SWPC were credited with providing ample time with early warnings ahead of the solar storm, allowing end users such as power grid operators to take the precautions needed to prevent a potentially crippling electric disaster.