A X4.0 (R3-strong) solar flare peaked at 08:30 UTC this morning. It was of course departing sunspot region 4274 which has been the source of so many solar flares and even geomagnetic storms this past week that provided the fireworks.
A Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) was launched into space but sunspot region 4274 is now near the west limb so the ejecta is heading mostly towards the north-west. We do see a faint full halo outline on the latest GOES-19 CCOR-1 coronagraph imagery which suggests a glancing blow might be possible.
Looking at the solar wind models we see NOAA SWPC's model forecasting a miss on 16 November while NASA's solar wind model shows a glancing blow on the same date. It makes sense to forecast a miss in this case purely based on the location of sunspot region 4274 but we go with the weak halo outline which we can see on the coronagraph imagery. We do believe NASA's solar wind model has a shot at being correct and a glancing blow is not out of the question on Sunday, 16 November. A minor (G1) geomagnetic storm watch is in effect starting this Sunday due to coronal hole influences but a glancing blow CME impact should not be ruled out.
