> Solar storms (and following northern lights) are bad news for radio communication.

Although it can allow for auroral backscatter propagation on VHF, which is fascinating. https://www.electronics-notes.com/articles/ham_radio/amateur...

Definitely not good for HF though. The Sun wilding out the past few days has at least given me the opportunity to work on some stuff in the evenings that isn’t screwing around on FT8, lol.