Here is a quote I saw useful.
“Solar cycles are capable of producing severe space weather. On September 1, 1859, a British astronomer named Richard Carrington observed the largest solar flare in solar storm that came to be known as the Solar Superstorm of 1859 or the Carrington Event. The Carrington Event caused fires in telegraph offices after it electrified transmission cables. It also produced extremely bright Northern Lights. So bright, in fact, that gold miners in the Rocky Mountains woke up and began preparing breakfast because they thought it was morning. If a similar storm were to happen today, the National Academy of Science estimates the damages could be in the range of $1-$2 trillion. The storm in 1859 caused outages in telegraph systems for most of America and Europe. You can only imagine what a solar storm of that magnitude would do to our communcations systems today. Let’s just say that your Twitter and Facebook accounts would not be updated for a while.















