Solar Report 2/16/23

Six new sunspot groups emerged over the past week: two on March 9, another on March 10, one more on March 12, and another two on March 14.

Sunspot numbers and solar flux declined this week.

Average daily sunspot numbers softened from 143.6 to 118.7, and average daily solar flux went from 181.6 to 153.6.

Predicted solar flux is 142, 150, 148, 146, 148, and 146 on March 16-21; 160 on March 22-23; 155 on March 24-26; 150 on March 27-28; 145 on March 29-30; 140, 145, 150, 155, and 160 on March 31 through April 4; 165 on April 5-8; 170 on April 9-11, and 175, 180, 180, 175, 170, and 165 on April 12-17.

Predicted planetary A index is 25 and 10 on March 16-17; 5 on March 18-19; 8 on March 20-21; 5 on March 22-23; 12, 16, 26, 18, 10, 8, 24, and 22 on March 24-31; 16 on April 1-2; 14, 12, 8, and 10 on April 3-6; 8 on April 7-8; 5, 8, 22, and 8 on April 9-12; 5 on April 13-14, and 8 and 16 on April 15-16.

Before Friday’s bulletin, check out the information on this DR2W propagation modeling site, recently from WB6MPH and last fall, from KB2S:

https://dr2w.de/dx-propagation/

Send your tips, reports, observations, questions, and comments to k7ra@arrl.net. When reporting observations, don’t forget to tell us which mode you were operating.

Sunspot numbers for March 9 through 15, 2023, were 155, 135, 126, 135, 87, 97, and 96, with a mean of 118.7. 10.7 cm flux was 178.8, 171.2, 157.4, 150, 143.3, 138.5, and 135.7, with a mean of 153.6. Estimated planetary A indices were 17, 11, 7, 8, 3, 17, and 29, with a mean of 13.1. Middle latitude A index was 14, 10, 5, 6, 2, 12, and 19, with a mean of 9.9.