What happened to solar maximum?

It seems that Sun is not reaching as high activity than predicted. Solar activity should peak at winter of 2013, but its very low right now. Its known though that sometimes Sun enters quiet ages, which seems to be happening now. Sun is truly underperforming. No strong flares for weeks and sun spot count low. There is only small, barely visible sunspots on Earth side.

Here is current activity vs. predicted one:


Spaceweather.com

Maybe its the calm before the storm, just storing up energy for bigger and more frequent releases.

I heard the current solar maximum is the weakes one. The Sun goes through periods of bigger solar maximums and smaller ones.

Careful what you ask for .

Originally posted by Thebel
It seems that Sun is not reaching as high activity than predicted.

And this would be a good thing, right? Not frying satellites, not causing blackouts, etc.

I've learned that predicting the solar cycle is not yet an exact science. It's educated guesswork as far as I can tell. So when the prediction is not exactly met, I wouldn't get too concerned about that.

Originally posted by OLD HIPPY DUDE
Careful what you ask for .

Exactly, life brings enough problems without the sun frying stuff.

I can remember reading about it more than 4 years ago, that this Solar maximum cycle will be of a very low intensity. I guess it was in some astronomical journal, but can't remember now which one it was.

I read a story a while ago in relation to less sunspots popping up on the Sun lately and there was a prediction that soon there may be none. Of course another article released around the same time said the opposite.