Fox News anchor Bret Baier examines the U.S. power supply on 'Special Report.'

Imagine being a telegraph operator in September 1859. You’re sitting at your station, using cutting-edge technology to tap out messages hundreds and thousands of miles away. Suddenly, brilliant auroras light up the night sky from the tropics to the poles.

Then chaos.

Sparks shower from your equipment, shocking you with a jolt strong enough to knock you out of your chair, while igniting your telegraph message papers. You later find out that some of your fellow operators could still send messages even after disconnecting their batteries — not knowing that the telegraph wires were being energized by massive currents induced in the wires by the most powerful geomagnetic storm in recorded history.

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That storm, triggered by a colossal solar flare observed by British astronomer Richard Carrington, unleashed a coronal mass ejection (CME) that slammed into Earth’s magnetic field. Such a massive solar storm is known as a Carrington Event.

A telegraph operator in 1859 could only wonder at today’s technology — technology that is far more vulnerable to the sun than was the case then.

The sun has an 11-year cycle, and this year is the peak of the cycle. On Feb. 1, giant sunspot AR4366 — a behemoth that grew rapidly from nothing to nearly half the size of the monster behind the Carrington Event — unleashed an X8-class solar flare, the strongest of Solar Cycle 25 so far.

In the preceding 24 hours, this unstable region hurled 23 M-class and four X-class flares earthward.........

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