
The sun erupted on March 22 at 9:45 p.m. EDT (0145 GMT on March 23) with a powerful X-class solar flare and unleashed a barrage of super-hot plasma towards Earth in what is known as a coronal mass ejection (CME).
The energetic onslaught hit our planet at 10:37 a.m. EDT (1437 GMT) on Sunday, March 24, sparking a severe G4-class geomagnetic storm, the strongest solar storm since 2017.