The Sun In Full Force

August 15, 2006: On July 31st, a tiny sunspot was born. It popped up from the sun's interior, floated around a bit, and vanished again in a few hours. On the sun this sort of thing happens all the time and, ordinarily, it wouldn't be worth mentioning. But this sunspot was special: It was backward.
Backward" means magnetically backward.
This tiny spot of backwardness matters because of what it might foretell: A really big solar cycle.
Satellite operators and NASA mission planners are bracing for this next solar cycle because it is expected to be exceptionally stormy, perhaps the stormiest in decades. Sunspots and solar flares will return in abundance, producing bright auroras on Earth and dangerous proton storms in space: full story.
But when will Solar Cycle 24 begin?
"Maybe it already did--on July 31st," says Hathaway. The first spot of a new solar cycle is always backwards. Solar physicists have long known that sunspot magnetic fields reverse polarity from cycle to cycle. N-S becomes S-N and vice versa. "The backward sunspot may be the first sunspot of Cycle 24."
Even if Cycle 24 has truly begun, "don't expect any great storms right away." Solar cycles last 11 years and take time to build up to fever pitch. For a while, perhaps one or two years, Cycle 23 and Cycle 24 will actually share the sun, making it a hodgepodge of backward and forward spots. Eventually, Cycle 24 will take over completely; then the fireworks will really begin.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/15aug_backwards.htm