As Hurricane José Forms In Irma's Wake The Sun Fires Off Another Solar Flare, the Largest in Ten Years

Following on yesterday morning's "Hurricane Irma Winds Are Now On Track To Hit 200 MPH; There's A Coronal Mass Ejection Headed Straight At The Earth; and Oh, An Asteroid is On the Way"

First up from Weather Underground the current picture on Joe:

As always these things can change both track and intensity very dramatically but it looks to miss the islands hardest hit by Irma. More to come, I'm sure.

And from SpaceWeather:

...MAJOR X-CLASS SOLAR FLARE: On Sept. 6th at 1202 UT, sunspot AR2673 unleashed a major X9.3-class solar flare--the strongest solar flare in more than a decade. X-rays and UV radiation from the blast ionized the top of Earth's atmosphere, causing a strong shortwave radio blackout over Europe, Africa and the Atlantic Ocean: blackout map.

Above: The extreme UV flash from today's X9-class flare. Credit: Solar Dynamics Observatory

The explosion also produced a CME, shown here in a movie from NASA's STEREO-A spacecraft. (The fast moving star-like object in the STEREO-A movie is the planet Mercury.) NOAA analysts are still modeling the trajectory of the CME to determine whether or not it is Earth-directed....MORE

We're juxtaposing the solar and terrestrial events not because they are related, they aren't, but because this would be a really bad time for a Carrington scale event destroying all communications on earth.

And because the timing is freaky-deaky.

Meanwhile a third hurricane has developed in the Gulf of Mexico and the Space Weather Prediction Center has upgraded the expected disturbance from the arrival of first flare/CME to 'strong'.

Here's Hurricane Katia at Category 6. It has not been accompanied by its own CME.
Yet.

A quick glance at the U.S. Geological Survey site - blogroll, right - shows no earthquakes above magnitude 5.1 so far today, so there is that.