THE SOLAR MAXIMUM NOW COULD BLOW UP TRANSFORMERS AND GROUND PLANES

 BEGIN PARTIAL QUOTE FROM:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/the-sun-is-about-to-get-more-active-than-it-has-for-a-decade-and-it-could-lead-to-power-outages-grounded-flights-and-stunning-auroras/ar-AA182dH9

This can trigger some bizarre phenomena. In one example is in 1972, US military pilots flying south of Haiphong harbor in North Vietnam saw two dozen sea mines explode in the water, without any apparent cause. 

A 2018 study looking at space weather at the time later concluded that this was caused by a huge solar storm. 

If the currents flood the electrical grid, they can blow up transformers.

One damaged transformer won't cause much of an issue. But if a huge geomagnetic storm heads towards Earth — a storm so big it would "probably give us aurora down to the equators" — that could cause several transformers to go at once.

It could also overwhelm other transformers that could then blow up, knocking out the whole grid, said Owens. 

In that case, restarting the grid "could be a matter of weeks or even months. Then you lose refrigeration, you lose power to hospitals, things get quite serious quite rapidly," said Owens.  

So far, we've been lucky. The worst solar storm we've seen happened in 1859. But we didn't rely as much on electricity back then as we do now, so the only thing that was knocked out was telegraph lines.