(Also see: "Solar Flare: What If Biggest Known Sun Storm Hit Today?")

Though scientists say the storm may still intensify as Friday approaches, the storm level is still at the G1 level—"minor" on the space-weather scale.

"At that level, the effects will be fairly minimal," said Young, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "Nothing that would actually cause any problems."

The solar storm's gentler-than-expected treatment of Earth so far has a lot to do with the direction the storm was traveling when it hit our planet's magnetic field, explained Young, who works on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory project.

"The Earth's magnetic field has a northward direction to it," he said. There's also a magnetic direction to each solar storm,