During the early hours of July 21st, a sunspot called AR3060 exploded and generated a C5-class solar flare, and a shadowy shock wave called a solar tsunami.
Soon after the explosion, the shock waves in the leading edge of a CME generated a Type II solar radio burst. As reported by US Air Force, the burst characteristics suggested that a CME was tearing through the sun’s atmosphere at a speed of 1063 km/s (2.4 million mph).
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory has created an extreme ultraviolet movie that shows how the solar tsunami is racing away from the explosion site.
As reported in Spaceweather.com, “The movie also shows the superposition of multiple CMEs. The brightest clouds at 8 and 10 o’clock may result from farside eruptions. They’re not coming to Earth, though. A faint full-halo CME that appears immediately before 02:06 UT is highly important. The tsunami set off that one and is squarely inside the Earth strike zone.”
According to NOAA, it might strike on July 23rd, possibly sparking G2-class geomagnetic storms.