The solar storm of 2012 was a solar storm involving an unusually large and strong coronal mass ejection that occurred on July 23, 2012. It missed Earth by a margin of roughly nine days, as the Sun's equator rotates around its own axis once over a period of about 25 days.
The region that produced the outburst was thus not pointed directly towards Earth at that time. The strength of the eruption has been predicted to be comparable to the 1859 Carrington Event that caused damage to electrical equipment worldwide, which at that time consisted mostly of telegraph systems.