NHCraigT
NES Member
LINK: Rocks Under I-95 Present Odd, and Scary, Threat to Power Grid
... Here’s something you probably didn’t know you needed to worry about: There’s a layer of 300 million-year-old rock under Interstate 95 that’s capable of killing the lights from Washington to Boston and beyond the next time the sun erupts in all its fury...
That’s because this Paleozoic-era rock doesn’t let the energy from a major geomagnetic storm -- a once-in-a-100-years kind of event -- pass through it but instead acts as a backstop that sends the surge back up above the ground for a second shot at causing mayhem.
.... It’s an active problem that a lot of people are trying to solve and understand,” said Christopher Balch, space scientist at the Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado....