Storms in the wind

The wind on Earth is always changing: sometimes it's gentle, other times it can be very strong. In the same way, the Sun's wind varies a lot as well. In Jude's Section on "Blowing in the Wind", he said that there are two types of solar wind: fast and slow.

Most of the time the wind hitting Earth is slow, but sometimes patches of fast wind can hit us as well, and space-weathermen call these storms, because they can cause aurorae.

The different types of solar wind (fast and slow) come from different bits of the Sun's surface. Because the Sun spins round every 27 days, the same patches of fast wind will hit the Earth every 27 days as well, and so these storms are also called periodic storms.

A different type of storm (called irregular storms) also cause aurorae. These happen when explosions happen on the Sun's surface (Mark described these in his section), and they throw out material into space. If this hits the Earth, then we can get aurorae.

It's possible to spot these storms before they hit Earth, and this is where I come in....

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