It would appear that the sun attempted to engage with AT&T’s customer service - you can’t really blame it for ending the encounter with a fit of rage that shut down the entire company.
The only outage I heard today was AT&T. Never had an issues on T-Mobile. However, my peer said his Verizon phone was having all kinds of problems. 🤷🏼♂️
But if we’re observing the visible light from the flares on earth, wouldn’t that mean the other electromagnetic interference has also arrived? Or is the interference caused by heavier radiation particles? Actually curious - I assumed that satellite to ground transmissions would be light or radio-based and therefore not affected by heavy radiation, only EM (which travels at the speed of light)…
OK, I had to Google it. Turns out radio blackouts with satellite comm systems to happen simultaneous with the Flare being observed. The intense EM radiation basically ionizes part of the ionosohere, causing the radio signals to be absorbed. So we WOULD expect potential disruption to comms as soon as the Flare was observed.