London to San Francisco

We had an interesting journey to San Francisco from London. Our flight was delayed by several hours as air traffic control for the UK 'went down' when we arrived at Berekely we had recieved a red alert email for auroral activity from the ever reliable:

http://www.dcs.lancs.ac.uk/iono/aurorawatch/



Rather approprately the timing of the high activty coincided exactly with the communication breakdown in the UK - could it be? This is really preparing us for our Spcae Weather experiences to come.