Sparked over the weekend of May 10 by several outbursts from the sun, this space weather event was the strongest geomagnetic storm in more than two decades. When those outbursts slammed into Earth, they pumped enormous amounts of particles and radiation into the planet's upper atmosphere, disrupting power grids, telecommunications, air travel, and GPS services.
But those adverse effects unfolded almost unnoticed, overshadowed by another product of the storm: stunning auroras that stretched down from the poles to lower latitudes, dazzling millions of onlookers around the globe with what may have been the most intense displays of the past 500 years.
Although those auroras generated most of the headlines, they were in some respects the event's least newsworthy aspect. What's more significant and much less appreciated is how well we weathered this storm: we experienced relatively minimal negative repercussions despite its status as the most powerful to strike Earth in a generation.
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