No problems yet

Washington, March 9 (AP): A solar storm shook the Earth’s magnetic field early today, but scientists said they had no reports of any problems with electrical systems.

After reports yesterday of the storm fizzling out, a surge of activity prompted space weather forecasters to issue alerts about changes in the magnetic field.

“We really haven’t had any reports from power system operators yet,” Rob Steenburgh, a space weather forecaster at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Centre in Boulder, Colorado, said early today. “But sometimes they don’t come in until after the storm.”

He said the storm reached a moderate level late yesterday, before going to a strong level early today. For most of Thursday, it was rated as minor.

Scientists say such storms don’t pose a threat to people, just technology.

The space weather centre’s website says a storm rated as strong could force corrections to voltage systems and trigger false alarms on some protection devices, as well as increase drag on satellites and affect their orientation.

The forecasters were not aware of any significant impact to electrical or technological systems, but said there was a two-hour blackout of high frequency radio communications — affecting mainly ham radio operations — stretching from eastern Africa to eastern Australia.