Natural disaster
A solar flare is a phenomenon where the Sun suddenly releases a great amount of solar radiation, much more than normal. Solar flares are unlikely to cause any direct injury, but can destroy electrical equipment. The potential of solar storms to cause disaster was seen during the 1859 Carrington event, which disrupted the telegraph network, and the March 1989 geomagnetic storm which blacked out Quebec. Some major known solar flares include the X20 event on August 16, 1989, and a similar flare on April 2, 2001. The most powerful flare ever recorded occurred on November 4, 2003 (estimated at between X40 and X45).
Solar phenomena
A solar flare is a sudden flash of brightness observed over the Sun's surface or the solar limb, which is interpreted as an energy release of up to 6 × 10 joules of energy (about a sixth of the total Sun's energy output each second or 160 billion megatons of TNT equivalent, over 25,000 times more energy than released from the impact of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 with Jupiter). They may be followed by a coronal mass ejection. The flare ejects clouds of electrons, ions and atoms through the corona into space. These clouds typically reach Earth a day or two after the event. Similar phenomena in other stars are known as stellar flares.