Space weather body warns GPS signals may be disrupted today due to a solar storm

DUST-OFF the street directory and watch where you are going. A solar storm may send your GPS phone spinning today.

Wrong turn ... the arrival of a solar flare may disrupt the passage of GPS signals throug

DUST-OFF the street directory and watch where you are going. A solar storm may send your GPS phone spinning today.

The sun unleashed an enormous jet of superheated particles on Saturday, and the fallout has implications here on Earth.

The X1 class flare was observed by the US NOAA Space Weather Prediction Centre. While the blast has been evaporating, it may still give satellites — in particular the GPS network — a headache.

NASA called the flare “significant” and predicted the energised particles would arrive over Earth Wednesday US time, today Australian time.

The Space Weather Prediction Centre has classified the flare as a “radio blackout event”, stating it could affect communications and cause errors among GPS satellite signals.

“Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation,” Karen Fox of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center said in a statement. “Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth’s atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however — when intense enough — they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel.”

There is also the potential for electrical power lines to be struck by a charge surge. So plug your rechargers into surge protectors.