There's at least one behind 2995 too. How unusual are these clusters? Also, they seem a bit to the north. I assume they would be more threatening if they were right on the equator?
It's not terribly unusual to see clusters like this in the +/- ~3 years surrounding solar maximum. And yes, the progression of sunspot latitude over the solar cycle progresses from higher latitudes to nearer the equator And another yes; Sunspots are generally more geoeffective the closer they are to the equator. But mostly, it's a matter of luck. 1) Whether a Carrington-level event is produced at all, and 2) Whether it is Earth directed. As for assigning a probability to the likelihood of another Carrington CME hitting Earth, it seems like a fool's errand, with one datapoint over 150 years. We don't even know what the actual plasma conditions were out there, just the Earth's response at the time, and only a vague picture of that, to boot. I'd be surprised if there wasn't an order of magnitude difference between different estimates, so I guess I find some comfort in the uncertainty. Let's pray for the 1% estimate. Of course, it's only a matter of time. Hopefully the sun holds off until this era of social turmoil resolves itself.
4/20 was yesterday, but you're still high edit: nihilism plays way better in person, srry
Interesting. Pete Riley suggested a 12% chance of Carrington class event between 2012 and 2022 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2011SW000734 Whereas another group says around 1% between 2019 and 2029 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-38918-8 I'm going to take the average and say 6%. TIL that near solar maxima, the Sun produces about three CMEs every day, whereas near solar minima, there is about one CME every five days.