The Sun's cycles can be better understood by sunspots

The more active solar storms can be gauged usually by how many sunspots are happening on the Sun. The Maunder Minimum is thought to begin around 2030 to 2035 I believe where the world could have another "little Ice age" this is one possible outcome. It will be a time with no sunspots at all which is also a part of the long term cycle of the sun.

When people talk about Global Warming it is true that is happening here but what isn't being considered is that the sun goes through various cycles too. For example, look at (spotless) days with no sun spots at all in the chart below from Spaceweather.com

So, Global warming people (I'm one of those who believe in this by the way) often are not taking into consideration the sunspot cycles of the sun which govern how many solar storms you are going to have and how possible it is we will have another direct hit from a solar storm.

Imagine a rifleman with a kalashnikov or AR-15 rifle firing in machine gun mode. Imagine yourself as earth out about 100 yards from this person. Now have the rifleman  slowly turn while firing in a circle. How often are you likely to be hit with a bullet? This is also is sort of how solar storms affect the earth on one side (whichever side is toward the sun from earth gets hit) by solar radiation which can knock out some or all electrical things on the planet during the next Carrington like event here on earth. The Carrington event was in 1859.

Solar storm of 1859 - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859

The Solar storm of 1859—known as the Carrington Event—was a powerful geomagnetic solar storm during solar cycle 10 (1855–1867). A solar coronal mass ejection hit Earth's magnetosphere and induced one of the largest geomagnetic storms on record, September 1–2, 1859.

‎Geomagnetic storm · ‎List of solar storms · ‎774–775 carbon-14 spike

 
Solar wind
speed: 439.6 km/sec
density: 6.9 protons/cm³
more data: ACE, DSCOVR
Updated: Today at 1821 UT X-ray Solar Flares
6-hr max: A4 1800 UT Aug11
24-hr: A4 0846 UT Aug11
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at: 1800 UT Daily Sun: 11 Aug 17 Sunspot AR2670 has a stable magnetic field that poses little threat for solar flares. Credit: SDO/HMI
Sunspot number: 11
What is the sunspot number?
Updated 11 Aug 2017

Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 0 days
2017 total: 56 days (25%)
2016 total: 32 days (9%)
2015 total: 0 days (0%)
2014 total: 1 day (<1 br=""> 2013 total: 0 days (0%)
2012 total: 0 days (0%)
2011 total: 2 days (<1 br=""> 2010 total: 51 days (14%)
2009 total: 260 days (71%)
Updated 11 Aug 2017