Update: 6:25pm Eastern Time:

First, there is one heck of a FOTW from today – John Petersen was our guest. You know all those things I’ve wanted to talk about here but not on the website – John dove in head first. He said some controversial things and we talked through them.

Also, we had an 8.3 earthquake in the Solomon Islands that was bafflingly downgraded to 7.6. Billy and I were on google+ within 20 minutes and our coverage can be seen on youtube.

Solar flaring is almost nil.Screen Shot 2014-04-12 at 6.17.13 PM

Solar wind is calm, but we expect impact soon from the coronal hole stream that emanated from the coronal holes that ramped our quake watch over the last few days.Screen Shot 2014-04-12 at 6.17.19 PM

The geomagnetic storm is over, and the energy integrated into our system over the day.Screen Shot 2014-04-12 at 6.17.28 PM

Energy peaked just before the earthquake.Screen Shot 2014-04-12 at 6.17.34 PM

The spots have been shy since gaining the spotlight.Screen Shot 2014-04-12 at 6.17.41 PM

There is complexity at the backside, it appears the large umbra at the backside is positive and the spot connected to the southern penumbra is negative! That’s our most-likely delta region.Screen Shot 2014-04-12 at 6.17.49 PM

Today was the last day for the coronal hole effectiveness. mars opposition was just a few days ago, and we had spaceweather today — that is all 3 factors at once! If the condition index had come out at noon today it would have been B+ … as it stands, apart from our aftershock concerns, the watch remains B-.Screen Shot 2014-04-12 at 6.18.07 PM