Band conditions especially good today 23/2

23/2/2017 0900 - 1300 UTC.
Both Twenty and 40 metres appear to be a lot better than they have been. The SFI is 83 and K Index is 2 - which are a better combination than we have seen of late but not enough I think to explain this mornings conditions - perhaps this has something to do with it (but I would have expected this to raise the noise level and kill the bands - or have I misunderstood something - quite likely).

Solar wind advisory

Earth is about to enter a stream of solar wind flowing from a hole in the sun’s atmosphere.

NOAA forecasters estimate a 60% chance of polar geomagnetic storms on Feb. 23rd as the solar wind speed quickens to 550 km/s or more.

Arctic sky watchers should be alert for auroras on Thursday and Friday nights.

Updates and sightings @ Spaceweather.com

Same experience here Ed
I’m trying to get some contacts on 15m for the Novice Rig Roundup (nothing to do with SOTA), but I couldn’t even get spotted on RBN anywhere all week, until today.
I got several spots with 15dB SNR into Northeast USA, and made a qso with KP4, with 100W and a simple groundplane. So lets hope this improvement keeps going for a while …
73 - Luc ON7DQ

K was 0 for a while yesterday. Might explain it.
Compton

This morning (24/2) it’s up to K=5 ! So I suspect that was the end of the good condx for a couple of days until the Solar Wind has passed by. Should be good for Aurora photographers at the moment.