Hi JeffT,
When I posted the information in my initial post, the storm had begun on the sun and some flares had been occuring for several days; however, this enormous flare was very significant and totally separate. It "occured" some hours earlier, that's true, but the partical affects didn't reach us here in my area until Wed., around noon. The earth was bombarded with radiation for eight minutes and that is something that isn't "felt" or "seen". We didn't notice anything unusual here, and by the following evening, we had everything plugged back up. Quite quickly, the scale was downgraded yesterday (29th), as it took it's northward path away from directly hitting the earth. Still, the storm is very significant and is still producting gigantic flares. Who knows what they will do or how they will move? It's not like "we here on earth" can move out of the way. I don't believe the media over-reacted at all in this area. In fact, all that I heard on local TV stations was that the skies over certain areas "north" were filled with lovely water-color movements. Some of the photos have been exceptionally beautiful.
Personally, as soon as I got wind of the event--and by the way, there is one big one coming right behind the other one--and as I write this (30th) I went to the site that I put up in my post. It has kept me well-informed from a scientific view, and not a "media-event" view. I know what you mean about that for sure.