This year featured some of the strongest solar storms on record, especially the G5 storm that rocked the planet back on May 10, 2024

Although society kept ticking (and satellites kept working), farms reliant on GPS technology experienced disruptions that turned their John Deere smart tractors into “demon possessed” machines, according to one farmer.

On May 10, 2024, one of the most massive solar storms in decades (and the strongest aurora display in centuries) crashed into Earth, making the northern lights not so northern—for a few nights, at least. “We’ll be studying this event for years,” NASA’s Acting Director of the Space Weather Analysis Office, Teresa Nieves-Chinchilla, said after the event. “It will help us test the limits of our models and understanding of solar storms.”

Now, details are still emerging about how the solar storm impacted the everyday goings-on here on Earth. One strange side effect, as reported by Spaceweather.com, is how this intense geomagnetic storm impacted farms knee-deep in May planting season. Because of this busy time of year, many farmers worked into the night with GPS-guided tractors doing a lot of the heavy lifting.

But then, things got weird.

“Our tractors acted like they were demon possessed,” Elaine Ramstad, an aurora chaser who’s family works a farm in northern Minnesota, told Spaceweather.com. “All my cousins called me during the May 10 storm to tell me that ‘my auroras’ were driving them crazy while they were planting.”

Ethan Schmidt, a service manager for John Deere, also told Spaceweather.com that more than 80 percent of farms use some basic form of GPS—these “smart” tractors can plant in perfect rows, apply just the right amount of fertilizer, and then harvest those crops later on. However, on the night of May 10, things went haywire as the Sun’s rays impacted the Earth’s ionosphere.

You can read more at:  Popular Mechanics.