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Solar storms cause GPS in tractors to temporarily break during height of planting season
MINNEAPOLIS — The rare geomagnetic storms that brought dazzling colors across the night sky caused some chaos.
Some navigational systems in farming equipment broke down over the weekend, the New York Times reports.
Many tractors use GPS to plant precise rows to avoid gaps and overlap. Farmers rely on it to plant more efficiently and precisely.
The disruption comes during the height of planting season in the Midwest and Canada.
“I’ve never dealt with anything like this,” Minnesota farmer Patrick O’Connor told the New York Times.
He says he got into his tractor at 5 p.m. Friday to plant corn when he received a warning from his GPS.
Landmark Implement, a John Deere dealer in the Midwest, warned farmers about the disruptions. It said the event “extremely compromised” the accuracy of some of its systems.
“…We expect that the rows won’t be where the AutoPath lines think they are,” Landmark Implement said in a press release. “This will only affect the fields that are planted during times of reduced accuracy. It is most likely going to be difficult – if not impossible – to make AutoPath work in these fields as the inaccuracy is most likely inconsistent.”
Strong solar storms can impact life in space and on Earth. GPS and communications satellites, and even the power grid can be interrupted.
Friday’s geomagnetic storm was the strongest in more than 20 years.
NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center says moderate to strong geomagnetic storms are “likely” on Monday, as well as minor storms on Tuesday. More solar flares are possible.
NOAA officials said there were reports of “power grid irregularities and degradation to high-frequency communications and GPS” due to the storm.
The House Ethics Committee, which has been conducting an investigation into sexual misconduct and obstruction allegations against Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, scheduled a vote for Friday on whether to release its report, according to three sources with knowledge of the committee’s work.
Hours after President-elect Donald Trump said he planned to nominate Gaetz to be attorney general, Gaetz resigned his congressional seat, effective immediately.
“I do not intend to take the oath of office for the same office in the 119th Congress, to pursue the position of Attorney General in the Trump Administration,” Gaetz said in his resignation letter obtained by CBS News
House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters that there was about an eight-week period during which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis could fill his seat by setting the date for a special election.
Now that Gaetz has resigned, it is unclear whether the panel will vote on releasing the report, since Gaetz is no longer in Congress.
There is precedent in Congress on the Senate side for an ethics committee report to become public after a member resigns from Congress, however. In 2011, this happened when Sen. John Ensign of Nevada resigned amid allegations that he tried to hide an extramarital affair.
But it’s not clear that that would apply to the House, leaving open the possibility that the report on Gaetz would not be released.
In June, the House Ethics Committee released a statement saying it was investigating a range of allegations against Gaetz, including sexual misconduct, illicit drug use, and bribery.
Multiple sources at the time told CBS News that four women had informed the House Ethics Committee that they had been paid to go to parties that included sex and drugs, and that Gaetz had also attended. The committee has Gaetz’s Venmo transactions that allegedly show payments for the women.
Gaetz has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and has called the committee’s investigation a “frivolous” smear campaign.
Some of the allegations of sexual misconduct under review by the committee were also the subject of a previous Department of Justice probe into Gaetz. Federal investigators sought to determine if Gaetz violated sex trafficking and obstruction of justice laws, but no charges were filed.
The House Ethics Committee resumed its investigation into Gaetz in 2023, following the Justice Department’s decision not to pursue charges against him.
Gaetz has long blamed then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, also a Republican, for the probe. And Gaetz later led the movement to sack McCarthy as speaker.
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