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When you see a graphic that depicts the Sun as just about as large as the Earth, you should just chuckle. The truth is that we are a tiny little rock compared to the giant ball of fire that we revolve around. And whenever that giant ball of fire become more active, that greatly affects what is happening on our planet. This is not a revolutionary concept, but a lot of people out there just can’t seem to grasp it. Yes, the Sun is a long distance away, but without it none of us could survive for long, and to say that it is absolutely enormous would be a massive understatement…
The Sun is 864,400 miles (1,391,000 kilometers) across. This is about 109 times the diameter of Earth. The Sun weighs about 333,000 times as much as Earth. It is so large that about 1,300,000 planet Earths can fit inside of it.
Please don’t just skim over those numbers.
The Sun is so large that we could literally fit 1.3 million Earths inside of it.
That is incredible.
Unfortunately for us, the Sun is also becoming increasingly active.
In fact, more than 160 sunspots were detected in the month of June alone…
The sun produced over 160 sunspots in June, the highest monthly number in more than two decades.
The data confirm that the current solar cycle, the 25th since records began, is picking up intensity at a much quicker pace than NASA and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) forecasted, sparking concerns of severe space weather events in the months and years to come.
Just days ago, one sunspot grew to be 10 times wider than Earth in just 48 hours, and it released an X-class flare that could have potentially caused major problems…
An enormous, rapidly growing sunspot on the sun’s surface has unleashed a mighty X-class flare — the most powerful type of solar flare the sun is capable of producing. The solar storm slammed into our planet, triggering brief radio blackouts in parts of the U.S. and elsewhere, but it could have been a lot worse, experts warned.
The enormous dark patch, named AR3354, emerged on the solar surface on June 27 and within 48 hours had grown to cover around 1.35 billion square miles (3.5 billion square kilometers), or 10 times wider than Earth. Space weather scientists were alarmed by the colossal sunspot’s rapid emergence and feared it could spit out a barrage of potentially harmful solar storms, according to Spaceweather.com.
Scientists have known for a long time that when the sun becomes more active it has a tremendous impact on our weather.
So have we been witnessing unusual weather lately?
We sure have.
For example, a “mega cluster of tornadoes” just monkey-hammered the Chicago area…
A mega cluster of tornadoes and thunderstorms have battered greater Chicago, leaving thousands without power and forcing hundreds of flights to be canceled.
Trees were uprooted and rooftops were ripped off, as the series of tornadoes left a path of destruction on Wednesday amid the meteorological chaos.
At least eight tornadoes touched down in four counties in northeastern Illinois, including four in Cook County, which is home to Chicago, as officials warned people to take shelter.
Chicago has never been known for tornadoes.
But now we have entered a time when we should expect the unexpected.
After the tornadoes had passed, one journalist said that he had “never seen anything like this in Chicago before”…
Following the storm, journalist James Kay tweeted a photo of billowing, low-lying clouds sitting over Lake Michigan behind the city’s skyline, commenting: ‘I’ve never seen anything like this in Chicago before.’
On the east coast, two months of rain just fell on the state of Vermont in only two days, and this has caused the worst flooding in about 100 years…