From what I have read we are looking at power outages between weeks and a couple years, and that current grids are not significantly protected. https://assets.lloyds.com/assets/pdf-solar-storm-risk-to-the-north-american-electric-grid/1/pdf-Solar-Storm-Risk-to-the-North-American-Electric-Grid.pdf What's up with this? However, magnetic field strength and orientation of incoming plasma – key ingredients in forecasting Earth impacts, can only be measured with a lead time of 15-30 minutes. Additionally, these satellites are all past their mission lives, and replacements are essential for monitoring solar activity in the near future. Improvement in forecasting Earth impacts will only be made by funding research targeted at predicting and continued investment in the infrastructure necessary to measure impulsive solar wind events. It seems to me that the biggest disruption would be due to a total lack of communication afterwards. No phones, no TV, etc. I think radio would probably be the most quickly reliable.Given the potential for large-scale, long-term economic and societal chaos, it is necessary to evaluate preparatory and mitigative measures. There are currently several space satellites in operation that can provide warnings of incoming CMEs on the timescale of hours to days, timescales that could allow grid operators to take preventative measures before the storm hits.
Remember back in 2003 or whatever when that transformer blew in the Niagara region and the entire upper Midwest lost power for about 3 days? It was that hard to fix, and the rest of the country was powered and thus available to help fix the problem. It was the middle of summer and very hot, but I don't exactly remember what we ate for those few days. Refrigeration being absent when it's 90 degrees is less than optimal.
So obviously we have instruments like LASCO (just save yourself some time and go to solarham.com for aggregated data), which can see a CME lift off of the sun in near real-time, but we also have spacecraft orbiting L1, between the Earth and sun, about 30 minutes upstream, measuring the plasma there. One particular component of the interplanetary magnetic field in the upstream solar wind matters far more than the others; The amount of flux along the orientation of Earth's dipole axis. If the IMF is very strong, oriented southwards, and embedded in a very fast and dense solar wind, like that of a CME, that's worst case scenario. "Improvement in forecasting Earth impacts" is like saying "OK so what if we knew the orientation of the magnetic field when it got blasted off from the sun and headed our direction?", or even "OK so what if we knew that a sunspot was going to produce a massive flare and Earthward-directed CME in a few days?". You score a few more days of warning, maximum. So what? The money should be taken from my research field and put towards fortifying our power grids and satellite systems. Sadly, I think that's gonna cost a hella lot more than what we're getting for research funding.