The Sun Awakens

Any road will do just fine, if you don't care where you're going.

The Cheshire Cat

Increased sunspots make the ham radio community happy -- better long-distance radio propagation.

Big solar storms and coronal mass ejections are the more troublesome, with the ability to cause all sorts of interesting things, ranging from increased auroras (pretty!) to transient and not-so-transient damage to orbiting payloads, and even to surface power distribution networks.

The observation systems in place can give operators some warning, but unlike cattle and sheep in a hailstorm, it's kind of hard to herd your satellites into a barn.

And about the only thing the folks on ISS can do are batten down the hatches and put on their lead BVDs!

(Don't know if they have lead BVDs or not. Wonder if they "see" any interesting things with closed eyes in a particle storm?)

Don't they see flashes even under normal circumstances? Neutrinos or something like that?

Interesting info on the solar flares and what NASA is doing...

Gotta copy that one somewhere, and use it again at the proper time - like you just did

PS: I was talking about the cat's pun, btw