Roger Moroney: Unfashionably hot flares are back

In one week's time, the grand old sun will be at its most northern point in our Kiwi skies.
Which means the sunlight on that day will be at its most meagre - our star is set to rise at 7.33am and will set at 4.56pm.
Can't even make 5pm.
The shortest day ... but, within just one week of this annual event, the day of June 28 will be two minutes longer ... oh bliss.
And the seconds will continue to mount into minutes until, on July 4, the sun finally stays in the sky until 5pm.
This additional sunlight should of course be a time for celebration as it heralds the beginning of the road into spring, but this is not quite the way of things ... as I was reminded after reading some wise words from weather ambassador Bob McDavitt last week.
Bob was noting the slightly unseasonable fogs of the north, explaining that northerlies, rather then the usual early winter southwesterlies, were holding the meteorological reins at this time.
Hence the mild start to the winter, and evidence that Niwa's predicted above-average temperatures for June and July is pretty well on the mark.
Then Bob added the line that while for now we had been spared the chilling "standard winter" southwesterlies, "they will come".
But it was what he said after that which nailed it.
He said the shortest day was almost on us, and after that would arrive the "harder side" of winter.
Yep, put a ring around July to kick it all in, because July is the month of the aphelion.
A mysterious thing which arrives on July 4.
While the seconds of sunlight continue to be added on that day, the old sun itself is actually at its furthest point from we of the Bay.
All to do with the elliptical orbit.
We will be as far as we can be from the sun on that day ... so while it's going to be spending more time in the northern skies its warmth will actually have grown weaker.
This isn't new of course, for the wise old seers and sages and those who have long worked the land have always lived by the doctrine that "as the days get longer the cold grows stronger".
Not even the best laid-plans of Niwa's "above average" forecasts will stave off the foul offerings of July.
It is a funny old thing, the sun.
Because while it is edging farther away from us at present it appears, in its own spectacular way, to be doing its best to send a few gigantic licks of flaming warmth in our direction.
There was a huge sunburst of energy last Thursday ... the Niwa's boffins call such an event a "coronal mass ejection".
We who barely made it through the fifth form call them solar flares.
The boffins said the massive cloud this thing blasted out covered half its surface and allowed "the largest amount of solar material into space, ever".
"Ever" is a long time ... so that coronal mass ejection was no solar sneeze.
However, despite the size of the thing it was unlikely to affect us, they said, adding that the reason for that was the direction it had blasted off in.
We'd get prettier auroras though, they said.
So, no dust and no additional radiation ... all good news, yeah?
Well, for now.
Because the scientists are all getting a little edgy due to the cycle of the sun's activity, which is being driven by magnetic fields.
It all sounds rather Dr Who and Star Trek, but apparently old Sol is set to reach its maximum magnetic "messiness" in late 2013 and early 2014, when the solar flares generated will be at their peak.
The problem here is the effect such flare action will have on satellite components ... the ones that circle above and give us everything from communications to navigation.
There is also the chance that some major power transformers could blow and take out large areas of power supply.
There could also be heat waves.
Hope crazy old Harold (the end is nigh) Camping doesn't get wind of this.
Remarkable, isn't it.
We can build computers to link the globe in seconds, build phones the size of postage stamps, satellites that watch and warn us of imminent weather, yet the rising sun in the summer of 2013/2014 may possess the ability to carve off about three decades of technological evolution in just a matter of hours.
Just so long as the heat doesn't take out the pigeons.
We'll need them to get the mail delivered.
Roger Moroney is an award-winning journalist for Hawke's Bay Today and observer of the slightly off-centre.