Eclipse 2024

[Sour Masher]

I had planned on the fing3r lakes area, checking several small towns I thought I could get to day of without highway traffic, but they sll went from 40% clouldcoved, which was pushing it, up to 70- 100%.Sucks. might go for Syracuse after all, as it is still at 40-50%. It seems like Buffalo is very cloudy now too, so R9xhester, which lo9ks very clear will likely get tons of traffic. I am tempted, but I don't see it happening since I wouldn't hit the road before 11:30am.

[The Feral Slasher]

I had planned on the fing3r lakes area, checking several small towns I thought I could get to day of without highway traffic, but they sll went from 40% clouldcoved, which was pushing it, up to 70- 100%.Sucks. might go for Syracuse after all, as it is still at 40-50%. It seems like Buffalo is very cloudy now too, so R9xhester, which lo9ks very clear will likely get tons of traffic. I am tempted, but I don't see it happening since I wouldn't hit the road before 11:30am.

yeah, watching the weather is a roller coaster ride. Almost cancelled my trip, but we are going. Then from Toronto we need to decide whether to go East or SW depending on traffic and/or weather. I sure hope the skies clear for everyone, it truly is a once (or twice if you are lucky) in a lifetime experience. One cool sidenote is that the Mariners, my hometown team, are playing in Toronto Mon -Wed, so we get to catch a road game and see another MLB stadium. Very excited to see Toronto as well, it's been on my list for a while. I may end up in Binghamton the week after, ha ha

[Sour Masher]

yeah, watching the weather is a roller coaster ride. Almost cancelled my trip, but we are going. Then from Toronto we need to decide whether to go East or SW depending on traffic and/or weather. I sure hope the skies clear for everyone, it truly is a once (or twice if you are lucky) in a lifetime experience. One cool sidenote is that the Mariners, my hometown team, are playing in Toronto Mon -Wed, so we get to catch a road game and see another MLB stadium. Very excited to see Toronto as well, it's been on my list for a while. I may end up in Binghamton the week after, ha ha

Toronto is great! I hope you have a great time and I hope we all get to see the eclipse! Syracuse is 45% cloudy. I wanna go there but I fear I won't make it. The initial plan was the Destimy mall parking lot im Syracuse and then seeing a movie and eating at the mall after to let things clear, but I tyink lots of others have the same idea. It is a massive mall, but I am assuming the lot will be full by early morning. I think it is the best plan for the w8fe and kids, but going to a small park in a nearby lake town seems the better bet. Just sucks they are all 75-85% cloudy.

Also, I don't usually proofread, but I guess I should when typing on my phone. Take that AI trying to cull this forum to train!

[The Feral Slasher]

Toronto is great! I hope you have a great time and I hope we all get to see the eclipse! Syracuse is 45% cloudy. I wanna go there but I fear I won't make it. The initial plan was the Destimy mall parking lot im Syracuse and then seeing a movie and eating at the mall after to let things clear, but I tyink lots of others have the same idea. It is a massive mall, but I am assuming the lot will be full by early morning. I think it is the best plan for the w8fe and kids, but going to a small park in a nearby lake town seems the better bet. Just sucks they are all 75-85% cloudy.

Also, I don't usually proofread, but I guess I should when typing on my phone. Take that AI trying to cull this forum to train!

my wife and I are super excited to spend a week in Toronto. hope for good weather....hope we all get to see an eclipse. The eclipse in 2017 for me was absolutely amazing. But as I look back and talk to my kids, it wasn't really the eclipse that they remember, it was the trip with me and their grandparents, and the whole experience that they recall. Enjoy the day and make it a memorable one for the family, and don't worry too much about the weather and traffic, just enjoy the day with your family
.

[rhd]

So now I may have to change my plans because the very area I had decided to go to (SWtern NY) is forecasted to be in solid clouds on Monday, when just 2 days ago it was forecasted to be cloudless. Now northeastern Ohio looks like a better place. I will continue to check the weather up until the time I leave (early Monday morning).

[The Feral Slasher]

So now I may have to change my plans because the very area I had decided to go to (SWtern NY) is forecasted to be in solid clouds on Monday, when just 2 days ago it was forecasted to be cloudless. Now northeastern Ohio looks like a better place. I will continue to check the weather up until the time I leave (early Monday morning).

it's pretty crazy, i think everyone who wants to see it needs to wake up on Monday and look at the best option, be ready to drive, and hope traffic isn't too bad.

[rhd]

Fun eclipse facts:

- There are more total eclipses in the Northern Hemisphere than the Southern. This is because the Sun is farther away from the Earth in summer so the Sun appears smaller which means there's a greater chance of the eclipse being total instead of "annular". This is opposed to the Southern Hemisphere where the Sun is closer to the Earth in the Southern summer, so the summer eclipses there are more likely to be annular. Because the Sun shines for a longer period in summer, this results in more total eclipses when the Sun is farther away, which is in the Northern summer. I did not know this. I hope I explained this well enough to be understood.
- In the Northeast, the direction of the eclipse will be almost from bottom to top instead of right to left as you would intuitively think. I did not realize this before either. During the 2017 eclipse, I observed that the direction was sort of from bottom right to top left, but at the time I didnt think this peculiar. If I thought anything about it, I must have thought that this was due to the inclination of Earth's and Moon's orbits w respect to each other. And it looks like the farther north you are, the more bottom to top the eclipse will be. I'm not sure why this is and I'm not sure why this eclipse is more bottom to top than the last one.
- Total eclipses have different magnitudes (of darkness). To be classified officially as a total eclipse, the magnitude must 1.0 or higher. The intensity of this one is 1.057. This will be the darkest eclipse in the US since 1806. That one had only a slightly higher magnitude of 1.060. I'm curious to see how dark it will get. The 2017 one was only 1.031 and was not at all like nighttime, more like dusk right after sunset.
- It is expected that a comet ("Devil's Comet") will be visible during totality. It will be to the left of the eclipse towards Jupiter which also should be visible. The comet will be very faint. I just bought a pair of binoculars so I'll use them to try to see it.

Weather forecast is still solid clouds for SW NY state so I'm still planning to head for NE Ohio, between Cleveland and Columbus.

[revo]

In case you won't be able to see the eclipse where you are:

[heyelander]

that was worse than being rick-rolled

[madducks]

In case you won't be able to see the eclipse where you are:

Oh, my eyes!

[revo]

Waited all day, got the glasses for the whole family, got out there an hour early and saw the early part of it……then an entire cloud bank rolled in and that was that. What a bummer.

[The Feral Slasher]

It was cloudy as far as the eye could see in Toronto, but I figured we would try to drive down to Hamilton to hopefully see the total eclipse. Traffic started slowing and I almost turned around but I saw a bright area up ahead i found a clear area just.before the total eclipse, so I was lucky, there were still quite a few clouds covering most of the sky

[Ken]

Forecast was for clouds in my area but it was a clear sky during the eclipse. Enjoyed it.

[Sour Masher]

We got to the Destiny Mall in Syracuse with time to spare, but there was 100% cloud cover. It was a bummer, but we stuck around and hoped. Totality at that location was to last 1:41, and I was hoping we would see part of it, and we did. Just before totality, the high clouds thinned enough to see the partial through the haze. It was too dim to see with the glasses, so maybe stupidly, I looked on without them. I tried to keep the kids covered until totality, but they may have looked a bit too, but it was so cloudy I'm not sure it was dangerous. It was only a few seconds before the clouds covered everything again for the first half of the totality. But then they cleared again, and we got about 10 seconds of just enough clearing just around the sun to see it. The corona was beautiful. It peaked through for another 5 seconds right at the end and I saw the transition from full to partial, again without the glasses, which was risky, but it was the only way to see anything through the thin, high clouds. All told, those 15 seconds of hazy viewing made the trip worth it. We went into the mall to eat and ideally let traffic pass some, but we probably should have left right away, since we ended up leaving at rush hour. The trip back took 5 hours to go 80 miles (it took us about two hours to get there), but it was more steady very slow than stop and go, which made it slightly more tolerable, and overall, I'm glad we made the journey. While I would have loved to have seen more of the eclipse, I suspect the return journey would have taken much longer had the weather been better. Given how dense the clouds were for all of the time before totality--not even a clue of where the sun was the whole time--I was grateful we got the glimpses we did. It was also cool to experience the darkness--all of the parking lot lights went on and it got colder too.

A complication that almost derailed things is my 9 year old woke up with pink eye that morning, so scrambling to get meds for that before we went was stressful, but it all worked out. My boys have this long running storyline where they have super powers and seem to half believe it, so I told them to keep willing the clouds away and played it up when it happened, which really added to the experience for them.

[rhd]

Well, the weather really played havoc w that one, didnt it?

Let me say first that most things went very well in my plan and I really enjoyed the experience. But I cant help but feel like I kinda botched it.

My modified plan was to see the eclipse somewhere between Columbus and Cleveland OH because the forecast I had seen early Saturday was that it would be only partly cloudy in that region. Sunday evening I studied the forecasts again and saw that this area was mostly forecasted to be completely cloudy now. I look at some weather forecast videos for the area, which mostly said that it would be cloudy Monday morning but that the clouds would move out by the time of the eclipse. But still the Google forecasts mostly showed totally cloudy and even rain on Monday in most places in this area. So I started looking further south. Local weather reports for Columbus said that the best place to see the eclipse was north and west of the city. So I started looking at the Google forecasts in this area. Things looked good in London, OH which is west of Columbus. I had looked at the maps of the region of totality and Columbus seemed to be within the southern part of this area so I thought London was in it, so I chose this location. By the time I finished researching this and finally made my decision, it was after 4 AM and I had to get ready to leave.

I left at about 6 AM Monday morning. It was 441 miles so I projected to get there at least 1.5 hours before the time of totality. I was expecting congestion when I got to Columbus but there was practically none. The only major slowdown came about 80 miles east of Columbus due to some "emergency event", which I took a detour around which delayed me about 30 minutes. I got to London just before 2 PM and the partial phase hadnt even started yet. The weather was high, thin clouds everywhere but you could see the Sun fine thru them. I asked at a convenience store where in town people were gathering for the eclipse and the person said "the park" probably would be a good place so I headed for it. There were not many people there, mostly families w their kids. I looked at the license plates on the cars in the parking lot and I didnt see a single out-of-state plate other than mine. At the place where I saw the 2017 eclipse there were people from all over, including a guy from New Zealand, even tho that place was even smaller and more remote than this place. I didnt really talk to anyone because everyone seemed to be involved w their families and friends. I saw someone using their binoculars to project an image of the eclipse on the ground. This is similar to the "pinhole" technique to see the phase of the eclipse w/o looking at the Sun. I didnt realize that you could do this so I tried w my binoculars and, sure enough, you see the Sun projected onto the ground where you can see the phase of the eclipse. You evidently have to point the large end of the binoculars towards the Sun - it didnt work the other way around. So even if you dont have the eclipse glasses you can use this technique to see how far along the eclipse is. Something I found strange was that I expected the image to be completely inverted because this is what happens when you view anything thru a lens. The eclipse started from the lower right so I expected the image thru the binoculars to display at the upper left but instead it appeared at the lower left. I dont know why this would be.

The total eclipse started at about 3:10 PM local time. I saw the "Bailey's beads" and waited for the total eclipse phase. There remained a very thin fiery edge at the bottom right. The brightness was so "muted" that you could look at it w your naked eye but that fiery edge remained thruout the whole event. Evidently, I was not quite in the area of totality. If I had been maybe just 10 miles or so farther north I would have been in it, which I had plenty of time to travel to since I got there early.

Anyway, this eclipse did not seem any darker than the one in 2017 - definitely not like nighttime, just dusk. Of course, it would have been a little darker if I had actually been in complete totality. Also, unlike what I've heard many other people say, it did not get noticeably cooler and the birds did not stop chirping or chirp more. This was the same as I experienced in the 2017 eclipse. I also saw a prominent solar flare at the very bottom of the Sun that was sort of similar to a jet-like volcanic eruption. I saw this also on videos that others took of the eclipse and these showed some other smaller flares on the right of the Sun, which I did not notice. I looked for the comet and for anything else I could see but the high clouds obscured everything but the Sun.

I drove home immediately after, and was very tired. Even tho I feel I partly botched the event, I'm very glad I went. The last minute hurried search for a non-cloudy spot I feel is what caused me to make a mistake in selecting the location. Had I had more time, I would have verified that the place actually was going to be in totality. But the high, thin clouds were everywhere so I still wouldnt have seen the comet.

Congrats to those of you that were able to see in totality, cloud-free. Hope you all had a good time.