I do not like cicadas » « The Dawkins Apologists crawl out of the woodwork!

The eclipse is going to be shy today

Behold our midwestern sky!

We’re going to be 100% socked in all day long, with rain.

I don’t think our 68% eclipse maximum is going to be visible this afternoon. I’ve got class at that time anyway.

I do not like cicadas » « The Dawkins Apologists crawl out of the woodwork!

Comments

  1. mordred says

    On the Weekend a German news site confused me with a headline about when and where the eclipse can be observed from Germany.

    The article eventually mentioned live streaming and planetariums simulating the event. I suppose that’s also an option for USians under bad weather.

  2. says

    I’m glad I didn’t make the trip to Texas, which looks like it’s going to be socked in if the GOES images are any indication. The totality centerline is sandwiched right between two stationary fronts, which is never a good thing. I’ll have to make do with my 96% partial from Central Illinois.
    I could have driven a few hours south, but I did that in 2017 and don’t want to repeat getting caught in that fiasco. Took 5 hours to drive down to Kentucky Lake, which is about normal and 10 to get back. I-24 north was a parking lot for 3+ hours. People were picnicking in the median.
    It was neat to see it, but not worth a repeat.

  4. Hoosier Bluegill says

    Luckily, I don’t have to leave my backyard, as I live in the path of totality. Forecast is for 46% (let’s call it 50%) cloud cover at totality, so we may have to look between the clouds but we should have a decent view of at least part of the eclipse.

  5. christoph says

    Oops-forgot to notify everybody. The sun will be turned off for a brief period this afternoon for some routine maintenance. We apologize for any inconvenience.

  6. birgerjohansson says

    Yeah, this happens to me whenever there is a comet, or one of the more common lunar eclipses.
    The beginning if this year, I only got a chance to spot Venus 3-4 times before it approached too close to the sun.

    Youtube has a map of where future solar eclipses will be visible, but I do not have it at my fingertips.

  9. Alverant says

    I’m close enough to the line of totality, all I need to do is go outside about 1pm and put on my special glasses.

  10. says

    I’m lucky to be in the zone of 90% totality in Owosso, MI. Not to far away from Cleveland, Ohio. Not only that, the skies are going to be clear. I can see the eclipse with my eclipse glasses on!

  11. billseymour says

    I’ve been through two total eclipses.  I didn’t have the proper glasses either time to look at the sun directly; so it got dark and it got light again.  Big deal.

    The first time, I had thrown together a pinhole camera and saw a pretty good image of the corona; but what I liked most was that we H. sapiens can do stuff like make cameras. 8-)

  13. charley says

    We drove to Madras, OR for the last one and camped in a large field the night before with many others. It was fun to hear the crescendo of excitement as it transitioned from diamond ring to totality. Totality is where it’s at. Anything less doesn’t compare.

    I videoed it with a tripod mounted old-school video camera, because it had 30x optical zoom. This worked pretty well, except the auto exposure opened up during totality and made the corona huge but lacking in detail. Consider manual exposure if you are making a video.

  14. says

    Okay so:
    New York city got flooded, the Statue of Liberty got struck by lightning, New York state dealt with two earthquakes, and now we’re dealing with a full solar eclipse. Can somebody PLEASE tell Walter Peck to turn that f***ing containment unit in the firehouse back on?! Seriously, that’s some Ghostbusters level shit right there! 😅

  15. Rob Grigjanis says

    Got a pretty good view of the 90% maximum here in Toronto during a brief thinning of cloud cover. Noticeable darkening. Cool.

  16. Matt G says

    My family in Rochester (NY) enjoyed a very short event. Totally overcast there, so all the saw was some rapid darkening in the few minutes before totality, pronounced dark for the three minutes of totality, then an equally rapid return to normal. Street lights came on during totality. Not what they’d hoped to see.

  17. Tethys says

    The eclipse was an unspectacular slight darkening of an already dark cloudy sky. The rain is great, and I’m sure there will be plenty of eclipse video available for viewing.

    MTG is a fitness influencer who represents one of the most gerrymandered districts in GA. Of course she is making mouth noises about earthquakes and eclipses being signs and portents of DOOM!!
    Any competent royal soothsayers would interpret those natural phenomenon as very bad juju for the king.

    If Earth is taking requests, I think an enormous sinkhole opening up and swallowing Mar-A-Lago would be a great idea.

  18. says

    MTG is a fitness influencer who represents one of the most gerrymandered districts in GA.

    She’s certainly not one of the leading minds of our time, that’s for sure.

    If Earth is taking requests, I think an enormous sinkhole opening up and swallowing Mar-A-Lago would be a great idea.

    IIRC, Mar-A-Lago is already earmarked for a wet and salty demise due to global warming.
    But that’ll take too long. So a little extra local subsidence would indeed not go amiss. :-)

  19. vinnievidivici says

    Hi—I’m a lurker who rarely comments, but I’ll come out from behind the curtains for this.

    This was my first total solar eclipse, and a bucket list item for me. My fam flew out from Sacramento to Waco, Tx for it, and while we were in the area we also splurged on VIP tickets to the “Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe.” Another bucket list item; check!

    There’s about 50% cloud cover here, which is a big improvement over the 70% thunderstorms that were predicted only a few days ago. So the partial phase leading up to totality was an interesting mix of clear skies and solar glasses ON, then clouds acting like a filter and solar glasses OFF (briefly—there are still wavelengths that get through). The sun being partially obscured by clouds made for some interesting compositions—especially if you’re shooting through a gap in a tree so the branches frame your photo. I got lucky, there.

    The moon’s shadow at totality cools the atmosphere, locally. The dip in personal temperature is noticeable, even though central Tx was very comfortable, today. But that cooling helps, too; the atmosphere cools (in a small circle, planetarily-speaking) and starts to sink, creating a high-pressure spot that pushes clouds away from the circle. If you’re socked-in, it’s no help. But for our partly-cloudy conditions, it made a great, big hole in the sky and our view of totality was perfect.

    We could see the corona, and a big, red prominence on the southern rim. Jupiter was visible off to the left, and Venus and Saturn to the right, but closer. The sky was a deep indigo, but not black like night—which I had expected. Then, it was over! 4 min, 16 sec, gone in a flash—too soon! Bring it back!

    People talk about a life-changing experience, or a spiritual one. I didn’t get that. But I felt like I did the first time I started looking at the night sky with a telescope: the solar system became a PLACE. Not just “phenomena” on the celestial sphere. When I first saw the mountains and valleys of the moon, I knew humans had been there. I felt it in my gut (whatever that means). When I saw the rings of Saturn and the moons of Jupiter through my telescope, they became destinations. Today, I watched three enormous spheres briefly make a straight line, and I had the privilege of standing on one of them, watching the rarified beauty of it. Of the geometry, and the fire, and the air, and the water (clouds), and the Earth.

    I hope I can see it again, someday. It was over too soon.

  20. drewl, Mental Toss Flycoon says

    @19 Noice… this is the third total eclipse I’ve had the chance to see, and I’ve been screwed by clouds every time. First one in ’79, in February, total overcast. But that wall of darkness rushing through the clouds was amazing.
    Pretty impressive for a ten year old.
    It got me into astronomy, and science in general. Maybe hope to make it until the next one?
    If not, I tried.
    Sometimes the journey is better than the goal.

  21. magistramarla says

    I only saw a slight dimming of the daylight here in Monterey, CA.
    I’ve been hearing from the kids.
    Daughter and family who traveled from Seattle to Texas dealt with cloud cover.
    Daughter in Denver got some nice pictures of a partial eclipse.
    Daughter who traveled with friends from DC to Ohio got some incredible pictures.
    My friend in San Antonio Skyped with me while her house became quite dark, then slowly brightened.
    Location, Location, Location!

  22. says

    So apparently God gave the DMV a fine clear day so we could see he was a bit miffed at us; but he gave those Texans a lot of cloud cover so they had a harder time seeing he was much more angry at Texas.

    Lamest passive-aggressive god EVER!

  23. says

    Wearing my eclipse glasses, felt like I was looking at a day moon that, within 90 minutes since 2:00 PM, formed a small crescent on the right hand side at 3:15 PM before becoming full again by the time 4:30 PM rolled around. It was spectacular!!!

  24. tacitus says

    I live in Austin, TX and the forecast gave me heartburn over the last week given that my sister and niece came over from England to see the eclipse (and me, of course).

    We decided to head north-west out of Austin in the morning toward the centerline of totality and in the opposite direction of the encroaching low banks of clouds. For the last hour before the eclipse we were driving in full sunshine being chased by the clouds, and in the end we won the race, stopping 110 miles NW of Austin for to watch the eclipse under clear skies. Woohoo!

    Twenty minutes later, the clouds arrived, and the drive home was a nightmare because of the traffic and a janky ignition coil causing us a few anxious moments, but it was all worth it.

  25. Hemidactylus says

    In Florida (which now sounds like I’m prefacing a horror shit show) we were supposed to get a partial of some percentage but I didn’t notice. I checked the shadows coming into my house and hours later at my neighbor’s yard, but didn’t see the cool effects I witnessed in August 2017. We had a very sunny day, but I’ve been dealing with the aftermath of an auto accident so was quite distracted. Maybe I’ll be alive for the next one. I’ll be 77. Looks like a total blackout:
    https://www.wesh.com/article/florida-solar-eclipse-2045/60429968

    Hopefully I’m alive and not in an authoritarian dystopia run by the bottled head of Donald Trump.

  26. tacitus says

    @Hemidactylus

    If you don’t want to wait that long, book a summer vacation in Spain in August 2026. Pretty cool part of the world to view an eclipse, and likely to have clear skies at that time of year.

  27. vinnievidivici says

    @tacitus, 24

    Strong work! That is a tale best told over blood wine in the presence of Warriors!

  28. Silentbob says

    @ StevoR

    We get ours in 2028, mate. Book a holiday in Sydney. Dead centre of a total solar eclipse in July.

  30. macallan says

    It looked like that over here as well, maybe a bit grouchier.
    Then again, I’ve seen two so far, one in the late 1990s in .de with light cloud cover so you didn’t need protective glasses, and one a couple years ago in TN.