A new report from British officials gives an ominous warning:  a solar storm that could damage the National Grid could arrive with no more than 12 hour’s warning.

The Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) says the possibility of “severe space weather” could leave nations in the dark and disrupt communications and air traffic.

“Solar activity can produce x-rays, high-energy particles and coronal mass ejections of plasma. Where such activity is directed towards Earth there is the potential to cause wide-ranging impacts. These include power loss, aviation disruption, communication loss, and disturbance to (or loss of) satellite systems,” the study reads.

The study says the storm could be worse than the Carrington event of 1859 that is considered the strongest geomagnetic storm to strike the Earth.   Electric equipment worldwide was damaged by the storm and in some places, telegraph lines caught fire from the storm.

“Most coronal mass ejections are not emitted in the direction of Earth,” the report says. “Those that are typically take one to three days to reach us, and we can predict the arrival time to within about six hours. Predictions are currently less accurate due to degradation in the satellite capability available to forecasters.

“Generally speaking, the faster the ejection, the greater the potential impacts. The Carrington event, for example, travelled to Earth in as little as 18 hours. It is therefore likely that our reasonable worst case scenario would only allow us 12 hours from observation to impact.”