treated like mushrooms again? ground level gamma rays

Me thinks we are being treated like mushrooms again. Friday 7/16 I came home from work in the early afternoon. Stripped off my work clothes, and went out to the back deck to enjoy a few moments of sun on my bare hide while I sipped on a tall ice tea. I took 2 steps onto the deck when I realized that something was wrong. The sunlight rather than feeling good literally hurt! I am half Cherokee Indian and have always considered the sun my friend. But not on this day.
A little investigation revealed that the sun was producing a string of X class solar flares.
I thought perhaps the UV levels were a little higher than normal. And that was the cause of my reaction on Friday, so I forgot it and stayed indoors.
Saturday night I was listening to Art Bell on coast-to-coast AM. Art spent half of the first hour talking about weird things currently going on with the sun. Crazy weather around the globe, His usual spiel.
Then he told of an email he had just received from a local listener. This guy claimed to have constructed a radiation monitoring station at his home. And that normal background levels were about10-15 counts per minuet or .001 rem a nice safe level.
On Friday 7/16 he noticed counts in excess of 3000 counts per minuet or 5+rems per hour. 4 rems are considered unsafe. I remember reading that one should not leave a fallout shelter for more than a very short time till the level fell to 2 mem, and then only for 8 hours or less. The guy claimed to have double checked his findings with a second commercial meter, and found the same thing.
I must point out that this was a totally unsubstantiated claim. If you have coast-to-coast stream link, you can listen for yourself. The first half hour of the program 7/17
I was just wondering if anyone on this list had the ability to verify this. The emailer was in Nevada, But I live just outside of Portland OR. And noticed the sun felt very different on this day. It has been reported that our magnetic field is developing holes; perhaps this is the result of that.
If anyone here has any insight on this I would love to hear it.


[edit on 18-7-2004 by Taeas]

As the magnetic field begins to flip the magnetic field doesn't just fade and reappear, it gets very spotty, irregular and unpredictable. You get pockets of North pole coming and going in the Southern hemisphere and visa versa, as well as patches that are just not magnetically protected at all. And this will probably last about a thousand years. A long time to wait for a suntan. Perhaps someone will mass produce a radiation meter so everyone can check to see if it's safe to tan durring these (flipping) years.