If you all haven't noticed, sunspot formation is at a low, yet CME's keep on a'coming by way of filament lift-offs.
Here is the latest from spaceweather.com:
I was wondering when all of those filaments would start letting go....CHANCE OF MAGNETIC STORMS: NOAA forecasters estimate a ~30% chance of geomagnetic storms around the poles on April 9th. That's when a CME is expected to deliver a glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field. The cloud was propelled in our direction by a solar filament erupting on April 5th (movie). High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras.
MERCURY-DIRECTED ERUPTION: For the past few days, magnetic filaments have been rising and snapping all around the sun. The latest eruption occured during the late hours of April 7th, shown here in an extreme UV video from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory:
The eruption hurled a CME into space. According to a forecast track prepared by analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab, the cloud will not hit Earth, but it will hit Mercury on April 9th around 02:29 UT (+/- 7 hours). Mercury's planetary magnetic field is only ~10% as strong as Earth's, so Mercury is not well protected from CMEs. When the clouds hit, they can actually scour atoms off Mercury's surface, adding material to Mercury's super-thin atmosphere and comet-like tail.