The NOAA space weather page (see link) predicts major geomagnetic storminess over the next 3 days or longer. I pulled out an old EOS article that describes Space Weather: By Barbara Poppe, EOS vol 81 p. 322 and 328, July 18, 2000.
Geomagnetic storms are measured by the Kp index (the green, yello, or red bars). Extreme storms of Kp9 come 4 times per solar cycle (11 years). Kp8 to Kp9 come 100 times per cycle, so not so rare. It got to Kp 6 yesterday and the day before. What is interesting is that the sun is very quiet-meaning the Xray flux is very low. It is the Xray flux that spike when there are flares, which are measured as C class, M class, and X class (the largest). X10 comes 8 per cycle, X1 comes 175 per cycle. There are 2000 M1 or larger flares per cycle, which means one every few days on average (although they must be concentrated at the solar maximums). So, there used to be lots of talk on this page about solar weather and earthquakes, but now that Lowell is not posting it seems that we are unclear on what solar effect is supposed to cause what earthquakes at what time lag, in what areas. It bothers me a little that everyone just presents the correlation as some sort of fact, when this is not clear at all. I still think something is going on, but not as generalized as used to be posted here: I'd see major storms or high X class flares and not see much going on in seismicity (in my casual looks at the California map and the NEIC global page).

So, we may have high Kp separate from Xray flux (low Xray), so it might be interesting to see what happens. So, what do people here think will happen?
Nothing special?
Mid Continenta and Eastern earthquakes in the US? Artic Canada intraplate quakes? Adirondacks-Quebec....
Ocean spreading centers and other volcanic centers...
Chris

• NOAA space weather