The sun in turmoil produced the most powerful solar flare recorded since the large solar storms of September 2017. It happened on Thursday 22 February, at 11.43pm Italian time, when an X6.3 class event occurred, the strongest of the current solar cycle (which began in 2019) The episode was not the only one: in the space of 23 hours, two other flares also occurred.
The solar flares did not produce coronal mass ejections, but their ultraviolet radiation ionized Earth's upper atmosphere, causing shortwave radio blackouts.