Washington DC among US cities most vulnerable to space weather
Several cities in the United States – including the nation’s capital – have power grids particularly vulnerable to the threat of space weather – but experts are still trying to understand why. Researchers at the British Geological Survey (BGS) found that certain regions of the US are more at risk from geomagnetic storms, which occur when the Sun spits out solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs). These are bursts of gas and magnetic fields which erupt into space from the solar atmosphere. They can cause geomagnetic storms that have the potential to damage infrastructure both in Earth’s orbit and on its surface, ranging from satellites to underground pipelines. Two of the cities with power grids found to be most vulnerable to the effects of such space weather are Washington DC and Milwaukee, according to Dr Lauren Orr of the…


