[CraigS]

Interesting read, Gary.

Just checking on the frequency of occurrence of power effecting ice-storms .. Wiki lists the following:

- 1998: 3 million people w/o power for up to 1.5 months;
- 2008 NE USA: 1.25 -1.3 million people w/o power for 4 to 16 days;
- 2009 USA: 2 million w/o power, killed 55 people;
- Xmas 2010: Moscow blackout of airport and city connecting railway followed by blackout of two other airports causing a complete air transport collapse.

I notice the IEEE article was written in 2000, (mostly) before the above 2008-2010 chaos occurred. Perhaps they've now updated their one-in-fifty year frequency-of-occurrence estimates.

Anyway, how accurate are GIC forecasts ?

I remember lots of speculation about how long the solar minimum was going to last, just recently. It was a big 'surprise' to all the forecasters that it was 'delayed', and went longer than they anticipated.

Methinks solar storm forecasting is still in its very, very, early stages. We seem to expect so much of weather forecasting technologies thesedays … completely forgetting the unpredictability of Chaotically behaving phenomena. The effect of such phenomena is well worthwhile taking defensive measures against, but placing any precise reliance on the forecasts, (ie: like 'the next 18 months'), might be futile and really where the politics of 'perception shaping' kicks in. (My 2 cents worth).

Cheers
PS: Oops .. there was another big outage-causing ice storm in 2005 as well.