Unpredictable dev!

 A huge surprise at 05:26 UTC today as unimpressive sunspot region 2974 produced a long duration M1.4 solar flare.

It became quickly obvious based on SDO imagery that this event likely was eruptive. Moments later, the confirmation of both Type II and IV radio sweeps added even more confidence to this early conclusion. Now that we have SOHO/LASCO coronagraph imagery we can take a look at the coronal mass ejection and see if it is aimed at Earth. We see an asymmetrical full halo outline but most of the ejecta is heading west. A faint halo outline is visible which does mean a glancing blow is possible on Monday, 28 March. The NOAA SWPC has yet to publish an official forecast but we do not expect geomagnetic storming from this event. The earth-directed portion of the plasma cloud is faint and should only cause limited geomagnetic disturbance at high latitude locations. Nonetheless something to keep an eye on for high latitude sky watchers.