Quebec Power Outage 1989

Most newspapers that reported this event considered the spectacular aurora to be the most newsworthy aspect of the storm.

Quebec power outage 1989. On march 10 a strong wind left the sun heading for earth. Hundreds of blackouts occur in some part of north america every year. Seen as far south as florida and cuba the vast majority of people in the northern hemisphere had never seen such a spectacle in recent memory. In 1989 a geomagnetic storm caused a nine hour power outage in quebec canada.

Six million people were affected and the ensuing blackout lasted more than 9 hours. On march 12 the first voltage fluctuations were being seen on the hydro quebec transmission grid. The onset time was exceptionally rapid. On march 10 1989 a cme about the size of 36 earths erupted from the suns roiling surface and ripped through space at a million miles 16 million kilometers per hour.

And this storm was by some measures only about a third of the size of the carrington event dr beggan says. On march 13 1989 the entire province of quebec canada suffered an electrical power blackout. And the quebec blackout was by no means. The quebec blackout was different because this one was caused by a solar storm.

In march 1989 quebec experienced a blackout caused by a solar storm. It released a billion tonne cloud of gas like the energy of thousands of nuclear bombs exploding at the same time says nasa. March 13 1989 the quebec blackout storm. This geomagnetic storm caused a nine hour outage of hydro quebecs electricity transmission system.

Est much of quebec province suddenly lost electrical power. The system control centre was doing what it could to maintain stability. The march 1989 geomagnetic storm occurred as part of severe to extreme solar storms during early to mid march 1989 the most notable being a geomagnetic storm that struck earth on march 13. Other historically significant solar storms occurred later in 1989 during a very active period of solar cycle 22.