Good evening and welcome to the MABW forecast, 00:01 UTC November 16, 2025.
A weak substorm is in progress. We had stronger storming a few hours ago, but, things have fallen off.
Current Conditions:
- Solar Wind Speed: 541 km/sec
- Solar Wind Magnetic Fields: Bt 6 nT, Bz 1 nT
I am watching this pretty closely, however, because we do have a large-ish coronal hole facing us currently. At times like this, looking at the ACE readout can be illuminating, and, indeed, low energy protons have been climbing overall. For those just joining us, the solar wind coming from the sun carries with it many charged particles; some are low energy, some are higher energy. The low ones go faster, because it’s like a marble race. The little ones scoot faster at first, but then the big ones accumulate momentum and catch up. So that’s what’s happening. When we see low energy protons climbing, it’s a pretty good indication that there are high energy particles behind them.
Of course, those particles may or may not align well with Earth’s poles, which is what we need for a reaction between those particles and the charged particles in Earth’s Ionosphere.
But, the low particles are a good clue something may be coming soon.
I’m watching with interest to see when SWFO-L1 may or may not get out to LaGrange 1 so we have some better data. It’s going to be a while. For now, ACE is what we have.
Doesn’t look like too much on the horizon after this weaker substorm, but, something is brewing, we just can’t know where the heck it is yet since it hasn’t passed ACE. Stay tuned!