[Duffy]

Hi Chris

Solar storms do occasionally affect Earth's magnetic field, low energy protons produced by a storm account for most of the unevenness in the red noise line, but causes little in the way of high dB irregularities. A particularly heavy storm however, can compress inactive stations in the VLF band, so instead of having evenly spaced trace lines, they become entwined with each other, but still has no discernible effect in the noise line.

Solar flares produce X-ray's that can disrupt VLF propagation in the ionosphere, and can affect individual or multiple transmitting stations depending on who's in the firing line at the time. The actual X-ray's themselves have little or no effect on the Earth because they are absorbed by water molecules in the upper atmosphere. The only portion of the solar spectrum that actually affects us and the Earth is Ultra-Violet (Hear there's a lot of that in California at the moment )).

It's a good suggestion, but since nothing has manifested itself in the allotted prediction time, I find myself broadening my variables list to include everything from increased water flows in underground springs to seismic blasting in the Greenland sea. I haven't bothered with alien contact yet!...But I'm getting there .

Duffy,