July 21, 2022: Sunspot AR3060 exploded during the early hours of July 21st (0110 UT), producing a C5-class solar flare and a solar tsunami. The “tsunami” is the shadowy shock wave seen racing away from the blast site in this extreme ultraviolet movie from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory:

Soon after the explosion, the US Air Force reported a Type II solar radio burst–a natural form of radio noise produced by shock waves in the leading edge of a CME. Characteristics of the burst suggested that a CME was tearing through the sun’s atmosphere at a speed of 1063 km/s (2.4 million mph).

Coronagraphs onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) have since seen the CME:

In the movie we see a superposition of multiple CMEs. The brightest clouds at the 8 o’clock and 10 o’clock positions may be from farside eruptions. They are not heading for Earth. Of greater interest is a faint full-halo CME which emerges just before 0206 UT. That one was launched by the tsunami and is squarely inside the Earth strike zone. NOAA forecasters expect it to arrive on July 23rd, possibly sparking G2-class geomagnetic storms. Solar flare alerts: SMS Text.