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Weather Planning for Eclipse Day

157 points by wallflower 3y ago

dylan604 3y ago
This is my biggest concern for eclipse day. In the past, when ever I spend money to take pictures of the sky, something always goes wrong. Rent a camera with the IR filter removed specific for astro purposes...it rains so much that the state park with very dark skies closes due to flooding. Have a free weekend with no scheduled activities, a new moon on the weekend, and most importantly, blessing from the SO, yup, weather. This time of year is thunderstorm season, and I'm already concerned about it since I've purchased plenty of solar protection for my gear. I'm just hoping my cunning plan of buying it all last year so far in advance confuses whatever it is that decides when I spend money we get bad visibility. ????
- ppierald 3y ago
  I happened to get invited to friends of my in-laws who own a vacation property on the Oregon coast for the 2017 eclipse. Of course, the Pacific coast is dicey at best, so we were crossing our fingers. When the time came, the stars lined up and we had that magical moment, except right at that moment, the waste truck came through picking up the bins. If you have the opportunity, GO. The worst case is you don't see it. The best case is one of the most memorable experiences of your life.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    Luckily, I don't have to go. It's coming to me. It was even kind enough to respond to my RSVP.
- pixl97 3y ago
  If the 8th is anything like today then 50% of the eclipse path would be covered by the clouds. You'd have to drive 600+ miles to get out of the overcast.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    Thanks for the pick me up with that one!
- mangamadaiyan 3y ago
  Aha, I see that even astrophotographers are not exempt from the curse of new equipment :) Good on you for buying your equipment well in advance, and may you have clear skies on the day.
JKCalhoun 3y ago
Yeah, plan on hitting the road and more or less following the path if the forecast doesn't look good where I am. In general it looks like the closer you go to Mexico, the better your odds — historically.
- Loughla 3y ago
  Yeah. We have tickets to the event at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, but plan to keep driving southwest or turn back around and go northeast if it's supposed to be cloudy in southern. Drive all night, sleep in a field if we have to.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    That's the great thing about this kind of event. You really don't have to be anywhere special once you're in the path. The side of the road is as good of a point as some field where they're charging money to attend. Just look up (with correct viewing glasses of course).
    - jrapdx3 3y ago
      That's exactly what happened at the last eclipse back in 2017. To get to the path of totality, I had to drive on an unpaved forest service road for several miles. Where the road ended there was a big clearing with a bunch of people already there. Fortunately they were very friendly, it was kind of a party atmosphere. Anyway, it was worth all the trouble. One thing was that I got some great photos of the eclipsed sun. I'm looking forward to the upcoming event in April. I'll be in Mexico where viewing should be good, bad weather being less likely in that region. Hopefully I'll be able to get even better photos this time around.
    - yyyfb 3y ago
      Countryside roads that normally get very little traffic can quickly get clogged. If you're prepared to sit in your car for a few hours you're good though. Also no need for glasses during totality. Before totality, you can look at the shape of shadows through a piece of paper with a whole punched in it.
PhyllisEngine 3y ago
SpotWx is excellent, use it quite a bit for mountaineering objectives, definitely recommend people check it out for precise data
RheingoldRiver 3y ago
I need to be in a city the eclipse is passing over, for a reason unrelated to the eclipse. I can't get a hotel room that night, and I think I will have to drive out of its path for one night. I don't even care about the eclipse but this is so inconvenient and I'm very frustrated.
- mbauman 3y ago
  Be prepared for day-of eclipse traffic, too!
  - RheingoldRiver 3y ago
    Oh god I didn't even think of that. But surely that would be in the opposite direction from me?
    - dylan604 3y ago
      There are plenty of stories you can look up from the 2017 event where people did not consider the traffic. Reviewing some of those might give you a better idea of what to expect for places in the path
    - ars 3y ago
      Don't expect to be able to leave the eclipse area for hours after. Traffic will be in all directions. If you can just chill for several hours and then leave.
- roughly 3y ago
  I’m sure you’ve heard this from everyone, and I don’t mean to minimize your frustration here, but - if you can find a way to see the eclipse, you really should. It’s a uniquely memorable event.
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  I would at least consider grabbing a sleeping bag and sleeping in my car for this.
- 3y ago
scd31 3y ago
As someone who's paranoid about missing the eclipse due to cloudy weather, I've been working with a few people to launch a high altitude balloon during the eclipse: https://eclipseplus.ca/ https://eclipseplus.ca/ We have several cameras on board, including one that points at the sun and one that takes video. It all gets live-streamed to the ground (actually, that's my contribution to the project - the communications system) and sent off to YouTube. We're launching from New Brunswick, Canada, and we'll be going up to about 30km, or 100k feet. So the clouds definitely won't be an issue for us.
- nelblu 3y ago
  Awesome! I'm driving myself to Kouchibouguac to experience the totality. Considering that maritimes is always cloudy during this time of the year I'm not expecting much of a "view" but just want to experience the total darkness. Where we live (NS) we are getting about 95% darkness but I figured a couple of hours drive is worth to experience 100%!
  - scd31 3y ago
    Absolutely. I've never experienced a total eclipse before but I hear the difference between 95% and 100% is stark; due to the logarithmic nature of the human eye. I'm not even sure if 95% coverage would even be noticeable without eclipse glasses. I'm from NS myself (Halifax) and have been trying to convince my parents to drive up to NB to see the eclipse. I'll be home for Easter so that'll probably be my last attempt!
    - ars 3y ago
      Even 99% is barely noticeable. Totality is a different category, it's not just "a bit darker". And a camera is not the same experience as looking around and being in a circle of darkness with a lit horizon in all directions.
      - xattt 3y ago
        Yes, the experience associated with a picture is what matters. Even if it’s a live stream of the eclipse, it’s not too different that looking at photos/videos of other eclipses online. You need to feel the change in air and the sounds to get the whole experience.
ghaff 3y ago
A bunch of us are going to Maine. We consider it a house party with actually seeing the eclipse as a bonus.
- ssocolow 3y ago
  Where in Maine? It passes over Katahdin, a mountain I love to climb, but it would be too much of a hassle for me to see it there.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    The Forks. Things are pretty sparse up in that area of Maine though at that time of year.
- SamBam 3y ago
  Me too, but the party is likely the only thing we'll get, with the weather. Ah well, there's always the next one in... 2045.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    Yeah. We're not really planning on seeing anything other than it getting dark.
fghorow 3y ago
I found this site a few weeks back. It was built for generic astronomical clear-sky use in the US and Canada (at least) but it has this page[1] for weather along the eclipse track. [1]https://www.cleardarksky.com/ec/2024-04-08_eclipse_map.html https://www.cleardarksky.com/ec/2024-04-08_eclipse_map.html
Tepix 3y ago
Related problem: How do i convince someone that it's worth traveling 30 hours (by boat) to be in the path of totality? Ideally i need something convincing in German. Thanks for your help!
- cldellow 3y ago
  Honestly, you'd have a hard time convincing me that it was worth it unless it was part of some other trip. If you're willing to travel 30 hours for a total solar eclipse, wait a few years and travel 10-20 hours instead. They're not _that_ rare.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    Such a procrastinator's response. Who knows where someone might be in their life in a few years, physically, medically, financially, whatevs. You might put off this to wait for something closer, but then the day of it's cloudy or something. If you have the chance to do it today, go for it. Plus, the more times the merrier. However, if it's not your thing, then it's not your thing. Nothing anyone says will really change that. But discouraging someone else is kind of an asshat move
    - slumberlust 3y ago
      Aye, but they've already put it off until now, so it can't be THAT much of a priority.
      - gwill 3y ago
        maybe they have more of a desire now than they did in the past, or maybe they are finally in a place in life where they're able to.
    - cldellow 3y ago
      By all means, the OP should go. Eclipses are cool! But they weren't asking if they should go, they were asking how to convince someone else to spend 30 hours travelling for 4 minutes of eclipse. My answer was that they should roll it into a larger trip, to amortize the cost. I was giving them an opinion on how I'd feel in that person's shoes. And I say this as someone who has travelled for eclipses, and will travel for this one.
orionsbelt 3y ago
Does anyone have a recommendation for the easiest way to see the eclipse if I haven’t started planning until now, from California? Flights to Mezatlan are basically full so it would involve a bunch of connections. Optimizing for being able to fly Saturday, and back Monday, with minimal hassle (eg connections or long drives) and hopefully a city that has more than a few seconds of totality. Thanks in advance for any tips
- et-al 3y ago
  There's plenty of cities in the US where you can experience totality. The bottleneck will probably be renting a car from the airport. 1. Check the Clear Sky Charts map fghorow shared (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39807463 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39807463) 2. Look up flights to major cities in the path 3. Check rental car availability
  - tzs 3y ago
    There are major cities where the airport is well into the path of totality, so you could skip #3 and watch from the airport.
    - ssl-3 3y ago
      Airports are never very dark unless you have misplaced your car in long-term parking.
- SamBam 3y ago
  How bad do you want to see it? LA to Dallas by car is about 20 hours. You could do that in two or three days...
  - zamalek 3y ago
    Having seem 5 at this point (mostly pure luck), I would spend 20 hours driving to see one. I'm doing 8 and at least I'll get a neat camping trip out of it if the weather decides to be a nuisance.
dohello1 3y ago
My biggest worry is dropping a bunch of money on a plane ticket just for the weather to ruin it!
- devilbunny 3y ago
  There were still seats on a Dallas-to-Cleveland flight out of DFW at 1:14 pm that day as of a few days ago. Probably no window seats, but the entire flight is in the path of totality and if you leave on time, you should be at 10k feet or above when it happens. Unless some seriously big weather intrudes, you will be above the clouds. American Airlines.
willidiots 3y ago
If you're new to this: from experience during past eclipses, make sure you're in the area of totality. Our family was on the edge of that area for the last one and thought it'd be enough - it wasn't, as we sadly learned sitting in a slightly dim parking lot. You need to be right under the center of it to get the full experience.
- margalabargala 3y ago
  Just want to emphasize this. The difference between near-totality and totality is immense. A partial eclipse is a crescent sun, similar to how our moon is a crescent much of the time. The crescent is shaped mildly differently due to the occlusion, but really after that novelty is gone, it's just daytime with a crescent sun. A sky with a total solar eclipse is a new, third kind of sky that is neither like day or night. It's as different from those as they are from one another, and what you will feel seeing it will be as though you have lived your whole life during the nighgband are seeing a night sky with the milky way for the first time. If you have the opportunity, don't miss it. The only thing this comic gets wrong is neglecting to mention the Y axis is a log scale. https://xkcd.com/1880/ https://xkcd.com/1880/
- ssl-3 3y ago
  Do you mean "in the path of totality" or "right under the center line?" I live "in the path" and I've got friends nearby with rural spots to watch from. Or: I can take a bit of a drive and find a spot to hang out pretty much directly under the center line, but they will be crowded and there isn't much of a practical way to avoid that. The difference, according to maps, seems to be just a few seconds of total occlusion. Or is there more to it than that?
  - mikeytown2 3y ago
    Aim for 80% inside the path. The couple extra seconds you'll gain from being dead center is usually not worth the hassle. clouds is your biggest enemy day of.
    - ssl-3 3y ago
riwsky 3y ago
Eclipse day? Beware the IDEs of March.
- Crespyl 3y ago
  Fortunately this one happens to be in April.
neilv 3y ago
How are people sourcing and testing their eclipse glasses? Amazon seems full of their usual random-brand-name search spamming. I see this, but don't know how many people are informed by it: https://eclipse.aas.org/eye-safety/how-to-tell-if-viewers-are-safe https://eclipse.aas.org/eye-safety/how-to-tell-if-viewers-ar...
- gs17 3y ago
  I got the ones B&H was selling and they're real (it also came with filters for phones and an app which I find suspicious). Amazon is way too risky for something like this when there's known fakes going around.
- Stratoscope 3y ago
  If you will be in the path of totality, you don't need eclipse glasses. Just wear your regular sunglasses, and don't look at the Sun during the partial phases. Bring a white sheet to put on the ground, and a large piece of paper with pinholes stuck into it. With your sunglasses on, look away from the Sun and project it through the pinholes onto the sheet. Keep watching as totality approaches, and something magical may happen: ripples of light and dark on your sheet, as if you were at the bottom of a stream or river. Then look up and you may see the Moon's shadow approaching at high speed! When the shadow overtakes you, turn around and make sure there are no little specks of light around the edge of the Sun. (These are called the diamond ring and Baily's beads.) A quick glance won't hurt you, just keep them out of the center of your vision so you don't have an afterimage. Then take your sunglasses off and behold the awesome solar corona. As soon as any of those specks come back, turn back around, sunglasses go on, and maybe head out to beat the crowds!
  - jader201 3y ago
    Or, just order any on the NASA approved list OP linked. You can buy these direct (for example), at a decent price: https://medicalkingusa.com/collections/inventory-set https://medicalkingusa.com/collections/inventory-set
    - 3y ago
EMM_386 3y ago
I drove from the northeast down to South Carolina to see the 2017 eclipse in the center of totality. All I can say is ... if you haven't experienced this in your life, go see it. But you must be in the arc of totality, even 99% isn't going to do it. The closer you get to the centerline, the longer totality lasts. And it's something else. It gets very dark, very quickly. It gets cold, the stars come out, it feels surreal. It's awe-inspiring.
- jader201 3y ago
  > The closer you get to the centerline, the longer totality lasts. The difference is logarithmic, though. And 90% vs. 100% center is only a matter of a few seconds difference. The difference between being on the far edge vs. 10% inside is much longer, though.
- acjohnson55 3y ago
  I did the same! I convinced my wife that we should put our 2 week old daughter in the car for her first roadtrip, and we made our way very slowly to the Carolinas. We were going to catch it in the mountains, near Boone, NC, but it was cloudy over there, so we frantically made our way into South Carolina. We managed to find clear enough skies just minutes before totality.
- mckn1ght 3y ago
  Drove from New England to southern Illinois and hiked into a park forest right on the line, directly between the points of greatest eclipse and greatest duration. Definitely the wildest natural phenomena I’ve ever witnessed, it literally took my breath away. Hard to imagine topping it without actually riding a rocket into space.
euroderf 3y ago
Tangentially related... My pet theory is that it was total eclipses that motivated ancient civilizations' evident fascination with astronomy and (by extension!) mathematics.
jccalhoun 3y ago
I live in the path of totality and the city is planning on it being chaos. There are billboards up. Schools are closed for the day. I'm sure every hotel room is booked. And yet, I mentioned it in class the other day and that was the first time one of my students - in college - had heard of it.
- criddell 3y ago
  Travis County (Austin, TX) has preemptively declared a disaster declaration for eclipse day. https://www.statesman.com/story/news/local/2024/03/08/solar-eclipse-2024-austin-texas-travis-county-disaster-declaration/72897350007/ https://www.statesman.com/story/news/local/2024/03/08/solar-...
SirMaster 3y ago
Someone told me to find a "pressure bubble" the day of. As in a region of high atmospheric pressure. As this would likely mean low or no cloud formation. Anyone have a good source of live or forecasted pressure maps?
tzs 3y ago
BTW your eclipse adventure doesn't necessarily end when the eclipse does. If you are driving home your navigation apps might try to send you on more adventures. The main roads and the reasonable alternates might all be slow over a wide area, leading to the apps thinking that various roads that would never normally be suggested would be better. Here is what a friend told my happened when he was trying to get from the middle or Oregon to the Bay Area after the 2017 eclipse: > Google kept sending us onto logging roads: we bailed on the first when we were told to turn onto a non-existent road; we bailed on the second when a van came out and told us that ~5 cars were stuck axle-deep in mud; we bailed on the third when we got to a sign informing us that we were about to enter an off-road-vehicle trail.
- el_nahual 3y ago
  I drove down to Carbondale, IL last eclipse from Chicago, usually a 5 hour drive. It took 8. Not too bad! Pulled over in some country rode with a patch of clear sky. It doesn't really matter where you are: the show is up there. The moment the eclipse ended we drove back to the interstate, which minutes prior had been empty. It was bumper-to-bumper. Like something out of a cartoon. The drive back to Chicago took 14 hours. I decided to follow Waze, which took me (and an endless line of cars with the same idea) through a one-lane dirt road through a bunch of farms. The people who lived there took lawn chairs out and sat down to drink beers and watch the strange procession. Stopped for lunch at a crossroads Panda Express. It was bedlam. Thousands of people all looking to eat something in rest stop that usually feeds dozens. The crew of pimply highschoolers resorted to slapping spoonfuls of random faux Chinese food into Styrofoam containers and giving it out for free. "Just take it!" The only scary part was being caught by one of those Midwestern thunderstorms about two hour out from Chicago--at 2am, after diving for about 18 hours straight, sticking my hand out of the window to wet it before slapping myself on the face to stay awake (no way to pull over--not when visibility is ~zero). Adventure indeed!

157 points by wallflower 3y ago

This is my biggest concern for eclipse day. In the past, when ever I spend money to take pictures of the sky, something always goes wrong. Rent a camera with the IR filter removed specific for astro purposes...it rains so much that the state park with very dark skies closes due to flooding. Have a free weekend with no scheduled activities, a new moon on the weekend, and most importantly, blessing from the SO, yup, weather. This time of year is thunderstorm season, and I'm already concerned about it since I've purchased plenty of solar protection for my gear. I'm just hoping my cunning plan of buying it all last year so far in advance confuses whatever it is that decides when I spend money we get bad visibility. ????

ppierald 3y ago
I happened to get invited to friends of my in-laws who own a vacation property on the Oregon coast for the 2017 eclipse. Of course, the Pacific coast is dicey at best, so we were crossing our fingers. When the time came, the stars lined up and we had that magical moment, except right at that moment, the waste truck came through picking up the bins. If you have the opportunity, GO. The worst case is you don't see it. The best case is one of the most memorable experiences of your life.
- dylan604 3y ago
  Luckily, I don't have to go. It's coming to me. It was even kind enough to respond to my RSVP.
pixl97 3y ago
If the 8th is anything like today then 50% of the eclipse path would be covered by the clouds. You'd have to drive 600+ miles to get out of the overcast.
- dylan604 3y ago
  Thanks for the pick me up with that one!
mangamadaiyan 3y ago
Aha, I see that even astrophotographers are not exempt from the curse of new equipment :) Good on you for buying your equipment well in advance, and may you have clear skies on the day.

JKCalhoun 3y ago

Yeah, plan on hitting the road and more or less following the path if the forecast doesn't look good where I am. In general it looks like the closer you go to Mexico, the better your odds — historically.

Loughla 3y ago
Yeah. We have tickets to the event at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, but plan to keep driving southwest or turn back around and go northeast if it's supposed to be cloudy in southern. Drive all night, sleep in a field if we have to.
- dylan604 3y ago
  That's the great thing about this kind of event. You really don't have to be anywhere special once you're in the path. The side of the road is as good of a point as some field where they're charging money to attend. Just look up (with correct viewing glasses of course).
  - jrapdx3 3y ago
    That's exactly what happened at the last eclipse back in 2017. To get to the path of totality, I had to drive on an unpaved forest service road for several miles. Where the road ended there was a big clearing with a bunch of people already there. Fortunately they were very friendly, it was kind of a party atmosphere. Anyway, it was worth all the trouble. One thing was that I got some great photos of the eclipsed sun. I'm looking forward to the upcoming event in April. I'll be in Mexico where viewing should be good, bad weather being less likely in that region. Hopefully I'll be able to get even better photos this time around.
  - yyyfb 3y ago
    Countryside roads that normally get very little traffic can quickly get clogged. If you're prepared to sit in your car for a few hours you're good though. Also no need for glasses during totality. Before totality, you can look at the shape of shadows through a piece of paper with a whole punched in it.

PhyllisEngine 3y ago

SpotWx is excellent, use it quite a bit for mountaineering objectives, definitely recommend people check it out for precise data

RheingoldRiver 3y ago

I need to be in a city the eclipse is passing over, for a reason unrelated to the eclipse. I can't get a hotel room that night, and I think I will have to drive out of its path for one night. I don't even care about the eclipse but this is so inconvenient and I'm very frustrated.

mbauman 3y ago
Be prepared for day-of eclipse traffic, too!
- RheingoldRiver 3y ago
  Oh god I didn't even think of that. But surely that would be in the opposite direction from me?
  - dylan604 3y ago
    There are plenty of stories you can look up from the 2017 event where people did not consider the traffic. Reviewing some of those might give you a better idea of what to expect for places in the path
  - ars 3y ago
    Don't expect to be able to leave the eclipse area for hours after. Traffic will be in all directions. If you can just chill for several hours and then leave.
roughly 3y ago
I’m sure you’ve heard this from everyone, and I don’t mean to minimize your frustration here, but - if you can find a way to see the eclipse, you really should. It’s a uniquely memorable event.
AnimalMuppet 3y ago
I would at least consider grabbing a sleeping bag and sleeping in my car for this.
3y ago

scd31 3y ago

As someone who's paranoid about missing the eclipse due to cloudy weather, I've been working with a few people to launch a high altitude balloon during the eclipse: https://eclipseplus.ca/ https://eclipseplus.ca/ We have several cameras on board, including one that points at the sun and one that takes video. It all gets live-streamed to the ground (actually, that's my contribution to the project - the communications system) and sent off to YouTube. We're launching from New Brunswick, Canada, and we'll be going up to about 30km, or 100k feet. So the clouds definitely won't be an issue for us.

nelblu 3y ago
Awesome! I'm driving myself to Kouchibouguac to experience the totality. Considering that maritimes is always cloudy during this time of the year I'm not expecting much of a "view" but just want to experience the total darkness. Where we live (NS) we are getting about 95% darkness but I figured a couple of hours drive is worth to experience 100%!
- scd31 3y ago
  Absolutely. I've never experienced a total eclipse before but I hear the difference between 95% and 100% is stark; due to the logarithmic nature of the human eye. I'm not even sure if 95% coverage would even be noticeable without eclipse glasses. I'm from NS myself (Halifax) and have been trying to convince my parents to drive up to NB to see the eclipse. I'll be home for Easter so that'll probably be my last attempt!
  - ars 3y ago
    Even 99% is barely noticeable. Totality is a different category, it's not just "a bit darker". And a camera is not the same experience as looking around and being in a circle of darkness with a lit horizon in all directions.
    - xattt 3y ago
      Yes, the experience associated with a picture is what matters. Even if it’s a live stream of the eclipse, it’s not too different that looking at photos/videos of other eclipses online. You need to feel the change in air and the sounds to get the whole experience.

ghaff 3y ago

A bunch of us are going to Maine. We consider it a house party with actually seeing the eclipse as a bonus.

ssocolow 3y ago
Where in Maine? It passes over Katahdin, a mountain I love to climb, but it would be too much of a hassle for me to see it there.
- ghaff 3y ago
  The Forks. Things are pretty sparse up in that area of Maine though at that time of year.
SamBam 3y ago
Me too, but the party is likely the only thing we'll get, with the weather. Ah well, there's always the next one in... 2045.
- ghaff 3y ago
  Yeah. We're not really planning on seeing anything other than it getting dark.

fghorow 3y ago

I found this site a few weeks back. It was built for generic astronomical clear-sky use in the US and Canada (at least) but it has this page[1] for weather along the eclipse track. [1]https://www.cleardarksky.com/ec/2024-04-08_eclipse_map.html https://www.cleardarksky.com/ec/2024-04-08_eclipse_map.html

Tepix 3y ago

Related problem: How do i convince someone that it's worth traveling 30 hours (by boat) to be in the path of totality? Ideally i need something convincing in German. Thanks for your help!

cldellow 3y ago
Honestly, you'd have a hard time convincing me that it was worth it unless it was part of some other trip. If you're willing to travel 30 hours for a total solar eclipse, wait a few years and travel 10-20 hours instead. They're not _that_ rare.
- dylan604 3y ago
  Such a procrastinator's response. Who knows where someone might be in their life in a few years, physically, medically, financially, whatevs. You might put off this to wait for something closer, but then the day of it's cloudy or something. If you have the chance to do it today, go for it. Plus, the more times the merrier. However, if it's not your thing, then it's not your thing. Nothing anyone says will really change that. But discouraging someone else is kind of an asshat move
  - slumberlust 3y ago
    Aye, but they've already put it off until now, so it can't be THAT much of a priority.
    - gwill 3y ago
      maybe they have more of a desire now than they did in the past, or maybe they are finally in a place in life where they're able to.
  - cldellow 3y ago
    By all means, the OP should go. Eclipses are cool! But they weren't asking if they should go, they were asking how to convince someone else to spend 30 hours travelling for 4 minutes of eclipse. My answer was that they should roll it into a larger trip, to amortize the cost. I was giving them an opinion on how I'd feel in that person's shoes. And I say this as someone who has travelled for eclipses, and will travel for this one.

orionsbelt 3y ago

Does anyone have a recommendation for the easiest way to see the eclipse if I haven’t started planning until now, from California? Flights to Mezatlan are basically full so it would involve a bunch of connections. Optimizing for being able to fly Saturday, and back Monday, with minimal hassle (eg connections or long drives) and hopefully a city that has more than a few seconds of totality. Thanks in advance for any tips

et-al 3y ago
There's plenty of cities in the US where you can experience totality. The bottleneck will probably be renting a car from the airport. 1. Check the Clear Sky Charts map fghorow shared (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39807463 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39807463) 2. Look up flights to major cities in the path 3. Check rental car availability
- tzs 3y ago
  There are major cities where the airport is well into the path of totality, so you could skip #3 and watch from the airport.
  - ssl-3 3y ago
    Airports are never very dark unless you have misplaced your car in long-term parking.
SamBam 3y ago
How bad do you want to see it? LA to Dallas by car is about 20 hours. You could do that in two or three days...
- zamalek 3y ago
  Having seem 5 at this point (mostly pure luck), I would spend 20 hours driving to see one. I'm doing 8 and at least I'll get a neat camping trip out of it if the weather decides to be a nuisance.

dohello1 3y ago

My biggest worry is dropping a bunch of money on a plane ticket just for the weather to ruin it!

devilbunny 3y ago
There were still seats on a Dallas-to-Cleveland flight out of DFW at 1:14 pm that day as of a few days ago. Probably no window seats, but the entire flight is in the path of totality and if you leave on time, you should be at 10k feet or above when it happens. Unless some seriously big weather intrudes, you will be above the clouds. American Airlines.

willidiots 3y ago

If you're new to this: from experience during past eclipses, make sure you're in the area of totality. Our family was on the edge of that area for the last one and thought it'd be enough - it wasn't, as we sadly learned sitting in a slightly dim parking lot. You need to be right under the center of it to get the full experience.

margalabargala 3y ago
Just want to emphasize this. The difference between near-totality and totality is immense. A partial eclipse is a crescent sun, similar to how our moon is a crescent much of the time. The crescent is shaped mildly differently due to the occlusion, but really after that novelty is gone, it's just daytime with a crescent sun. A sky with a total solar eclipse is a new, third kind of sky that is neither like day or night. It's as different from those as they are from one another, and what you will feel seeing it will be as though you have lived your whole life during the nighgband are seeing a night sky with the milky way for the first time. If you have the opportunity, don't miss it. The only thing this comic gets wrong is neglecting to mention the Y axis is a log scale. https://xkcd.com/1880/ https://xkcd.com/1880/
ssl-3 3y ago
Do you mean "in the path of totality" or "right under the center line?" I live "in the path" and I've got friends nearby with rural spots to watch from. Or: I can take a bit of a drive and find a spot to hang out pretty much directly under the center line, but they will be crowded and there isn't much of a practical way to avoid that. The difference, according to maps, seems to be just a few seconds of total occlusion. Or is there more to it than that?
- mikeytown2 3y ago
  Aim for 80% inside the path. The couple extra seconds you'll gain from being dead center is usually not worth the hassle. clouds is your biggest enemy day of.
  - ssl-3 3y ago

riwsky 3y ago

Eclipse day? Beware the IDEs of March.

Crespyl 3y ago
Fortunately this one happens to be in April.

neilv 3y ago

How are people sourcing and testing their eclipse glasses? Amazon seems full of their usual random-brand-name search spamming. I see this, but don't know how many people are informed by it: https://eclipse.aas.org/eye-safety/how-to-tell-if-viewers-are-safe https://eclipse.aas.org/eye-safety/how-to-tell-if-viewers-ar...

gs17 3y ago
I got the ones B&H was selling and they're real (it also came with filters for phones and an app which I find suspicious). Amazon is way too risky for something like this when there's known fakes going around.
Stratoscope 3y ago
If you will be in the path of totality, you don't need eclipse glasses. Just wear your regular sunglasses, and don't look at the Sun during the partial phases. Bring a white sheet to put on the ground, and a large piece of paper with pinholes stuck into it. With your sunglasses on, look away from the Sun and project it through the pinholes onto the sheet. Keep watching as totality approaches, and something magical may happen: ripples of light and dark on your sheet, as if you were at the bottom of a stream or river. Then look up and you may see the Moon's shadow approaching at high speed! When the shadow overtakes you, turn around and make sure there are no little specks of light around the edge of the Sun. (These are called the diamond ring and Baily's beads.) A quick glance won't hurt you, just keep them out of the center of your vision so you don't have an afterimage. Then take your sunglasses off and behold the awesome solar corona. As soon as any of those specks come back, turn back around, sunglasses go on, and maybe head out to beat the crowds!
- jader201 3y ago
  Or, just order any on the NASA approved list OP linked. You can buy these direct (for example), at a decent price: https://medicalkingusa.com/collections/inventory-set https://medicalkingusa.com/collections/inventory-set
  - 3y ago

EMM_386 3y ago

I drove from the northeast down to South Carolina to see the 2017 eclipse in the center of totality. All I can say is ... if you haven't experienced this in your life, go see it. But you must be in the arc of totality, even 99% isn't going to do it. The closer you get to the centerline, the longer totality lasts. And it's something else. It gets very dark, very quickly. It gets cold, the stars come out, it feels surreal. It's awe-inspiring.

jader201 3y ago
> The closer you get to the centerline, the longer totality lasts. The difference is logarithmic, though. And 90% vs. 100% center is only a matter of a few seconds difference. The difference between being on the far edge vs. 10% inside is much longer, though.
acjohnson55 3y ago
I did the same! I convinced my wife that we should put our 2 week old daughter in the car for her first roadtrip, and we made our way very slowly to the Carolinas. We were going to catch it in the mountains, near Boone, NC, but it was cloudy over there, so we frantically made our way into South Carolina. We managed to find clear enough skies just minutes before totality.
mckn1ght 3y ago
Drove from New England to southern Illinois and hiked into a park forest right on the line, directly between the points of greatest eclipse and greatest duration. Definitely the wildest natural phenomena I’ve ever witnessed, it literally took my breath away. Hard to imagine topping it without actually riding a rocket into space.

euroderf 3y ago

Tangentially related... My pet theory is that it was total eclipses that motivated ancient civilizations' evident fascination with astronomy and (by extension!) mathematics.

jccalhoun 3y ago

I live in the path of totality and the city is planning on it being chaos. There are billboards up. Schools are closed for the day. I'm sure every hotel room is booked. And yet, I mentioned it in class the other day and that was the first time one of my students - in college - had heard of it.

criddell 3y ago
Travis County (Austin, TX) has preemptively declared a disaster declaration for eclipse day. https://www.statesman.com/story/news/local/2024/03/08/solar-eclipse-2024-austin-texas-travis-county-disaster-declaration/72897350007/ https://www.statesman.com/story/news/local/2024/03/08/solar-...

SirMaster 3y ago

Someone told me to find a "pressure bubble" the day of. As in a region of high atmospheric pressure. As this would likely mean low or no cloud formation. Anyone have a good source of live or forecasted pressure maps?

tzs 3y ago

BTW your eclipse adventure doesn't necessarily end when the eclipse does. If you are driving home your navigation apps might try to send you on more adventures. The main roads and the reasonable alternates might all be slow over a wide area, leading to the apps thinking that various roads that would never normally be suggested would be better. Here is what a friend told my happened when he was trying to get from the middle or Oregon to the Bay Area after the 2017 eclipse: > Google kept sending us onto logging roads: we bailed on the first when we were told to turn onto a non-existent road; we bailed on the second when a van came out and told us that ~5 cars were stuck axle-deep in mud; we bailed on the third when we got to a sign informing us that we were about to enter an off-road-vehicle trail.

el_nahual 3y ago
I drove down to Carbondale, IL last eclipse from Chicago, usually a 5 hour drive. It took 8. Not too bad! Pulled over in some country rode with a patch of clear sky. It doesn't really matter where you are: the show is up there. The moment the eclipse ended we drove back to the interstate, which minutes prior had been empty. It was bumper-to-bumper. Like something out of a cartoon. The drive back to Chicago took 14 hours. I decided to follow Waze, which took me (and an endless line of cars with the same idea) through a one-lane dirt road through a bunch of farms. The people who lived there took lawn chairs out and sat down to drink beers and watch the strange procession. Stopped for lunch at a crossroads Panda Express. It was bedlam. Thousands of people all looking to eat something in rest stop that usually feeds dozens. The crew of pimply highschoolers resorted to slapping spoonfuls of random faux Chinese food into Styrofoam containers and giving it out for free. "Just take it!" The only scary part was being caught by one of those Midwestern thunderstorms about two hour out from Chicago--at 2am, after diving for about 18 hours straight, sticking my hand out of the window to wet it before slapping myself on the face to stay awake (no way to pull over--not when visibility is ~zero). Adventure indeed!