Around 70% peak in suburbs of New York. I thought it was great, as did my six-year-old. We had a few clouds, but mostly clear, sunny skies. An hour of beautiful crescent-shaped dappled shadows under trees (and pretty little crescents reflected by a crystal prism in my car), with several minutes of enjoying the partly eclipsed sun through eclipse glasses.
Had about 10 seconds of totality at my work. Very cool. Two minutes would have been mind-blowing.
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81% totality here. Mr. Rilch and I were out on the deck. He had a cigar; I had a whiskey. He took readings with his light meter, and I texted a play-by-play for my friend who is in the hospital :(. Also, we had the iPod: Dark Side of the Moon, then Days of Future Past, then at peak obscurity, the Valse Triste, then Led Zep IV. Now we’re all geared up for 2024, which will have a path of totality very close to us!
Drove from Houston up to Nacogdoches, TX for less cloud cover and a few percent more coverage (about 80% at maximum). Got a few rather pretty pictures of crescent sun images projected from small holes in the roof of a pavilion in the city park. Reduction in sunlight was definitely noticeable from about a half hour before to a half hour after maximum. Mission accomplished.
Left my wife* and drove off to follow my dream. My dream was a patch of blue sky on the horizon that never got any closer… so when eclipse time came, I was lost on some county highway in front of an “antique store”(really, one old geezer’s garage sale).
Geezer had an old welding helmet, I had my glasses, and we were surprised to find out we could see the (85%) sliver of sun through the cloud cover. And the birds were freaking out, so it wasn’t a complete loss. Hope I make it to someplace with totality and clear skies in 2024.
*just for the day, I think.
Was very close to center of totality near Shoshoni WY. Totality is absolutely amazing. It will stand amoung the top experiences I have had. Up to totality was very cool experience and light got very strange as it approached, but if all you have seen is partial eclipse you have no idea how fantasticly amazing balls totality is.
Corona was huge and could see a solar prominence with binoculars. Friend got some fantastic shots on his eight inch telescope.
I left my house this morning at 5:12 AM. I went to the store for ice and donuts. Then I headed to my sister and BIL’s house. We loaded up, picked up our other sister, and headed for Grand Island Nebraska.
We’d intended to go to SE Nebraska, from Topeka KS here. But early Sunday some folks we were going to meet in a tiny town called Dawson, said the weather forecast sucked there, and they were going for the other place. One guy is a retired meteorologist, so we took his advice seriously. It was a five hour + trip, and we got to our destination just before the dragon started to eat the sun. We had also been in communication with my cousin and her husband, from Weeping Water, NE, and they were with us. It was a farm outside of Grand Island, owned by a friend of a friend of a cousin or something, and they were “the more the merrier” types.
At Grand Island there were clouds around, but those over the sun were thin and lacy and did not obstruct our view. At the moment of totality(WE DID SEE IT!!!) the corona burst into view. It was sunset for 360 degrees around us, and it was very dim. We saw a fiew stars and Venus. It’s one of the most amazing sights I’ve ever seen. We were all doing “woo-hoos” and fist pumps.
We had two and a half minutes of totality. I’ll never forget it. The long drive both ways was well worth it.
We had an amazing time with the eclipse too. We’re just inland from the Oregon Coast.
My husband had a telescope set up with appropriate filters, so we were able to see the sun very magnified. I also had a camera with filter that had good telephoto. I got some amazing pictures, especially of the corona.
It definitely got cooler and darker. I tried to take a picture of the yard shortly before totality to show how dark it got, but my camera compensated, so I have some lovely tree shots instead.
We did notice some really interesting shadows coming through the leaves. They seemed to be showing the eclipse in a manner similar to a pinhole camera. There was a whole tree’s worth of shadows, and they were all crescents. I have a few good pictures of that too.
The totality was amazing. We’ve started planning our trip for the next eclipse. 
Saw this with about 200 others at a small airport near Benton TN. Weather uncomfortably hot & humid, but excellent for viewing. 2m 12s of totality.
I read that the difference in the amount of solar radiation between 99% and totality is a factor of around 10,000. Based on today’s evidence , that is also roughly the ratio of the drama and appeal of totality vs. 99%. I’d seen 90+% before - which gave not even a faint hint of what to expect.
One enduring memory will be the collective gasp of astonishment heard as totality arrived.
I will never miss another one that any reasonable effort would allow me to see.
Heavy cloud cover in Kansas City MO region.
Maybe if you were extremely lucky you got a break in the right place and time, but not where I was (little town off of I-35).
The 2024 one is about 95% coverage for me. I think 100% is only 90 minutes away(or less, actually).
Did people who traveled this time just go to somewhere with a large parking lot? Where did you go?
Can I just say that NASA wins the internet with its tweets.
The Sun was not pleased.
Well I tried posting earlier, just before it.
At T-9 minutes, there was no sun, just lots of clouds, but there was some blue sky in the distance; 80% totality & the clouds thinned out enough to see it, which made for some interesting photos. (That’s an unedited color image, BTW.)
Making plans for 2024!
We saw the total eclipse in Glendo, Wyoming - about 2.5 minutes of totality and perfectly clear skies. We got up at 4:30am to drive from Greeley, Colorado, the closest lodging we were able to book. Worries about traffic were unfounded; there were a few slow spots but we made it in plenty of time. Quite nice; it was the 4th total eclipse for me and my husband and the 3rd for our son.
Incidentally, it was my husband’s birthday, and he’s the real eclipse chaser of the family so it was a nice present for him. The first eclipse we ever saw was on our son’s birthday, exactly a decade before he was born.
Afterward, we drove all the way to Cooke City, Montana. Wow! Great scenery. I’ve never seen the American West before.
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We had 100% totality here in Tennessee, and I can tell you that really, until minutes before the whole thing was covered, you couldn’t tell much was happening if you weren’t using special viewers.
I viewed the eclipse at a friend’s farm, although I had 100% totality at my farm, too. I had a great time! It was really much more exciting than I expected. The moment when it hit totality, and soon the fireflies started blinking. Just cool. Perfect weather - minimal cloud interference and none during the 2.5 minutes of the totality. And lunch! And hot fudge ice cream cake!
StG
Bummed. Travelled across the world to St Joseph. Sweet town, but the scare campaign to keep people away worked too well. Local businesses over invested. Festival under attended.
Storms all day, heavily overcast at totality. Saw everything go dark, but none of the spectacle. I’m lucky I’ve seen one before or I would be v shitty.
I drove 6 hours across Oklahoma and Kansas to watch from a friend of a friend’s house in SW Missouri. This is what I posted on Facebook:
"I was lucky enough to see a total eclipse of the sun today. It had rained for most of the morning and stopped an hour before the eclipse was to begin. Right as it started, we began to breaks in the clouds and we caught glimpses through the clouds with our glasses. Ten minutes before totality, a large clear patch of sky was overhead and we saw the entire totality without any obstruction. Ten minutes after the totality was over, the clouds returned. We had won the eclipse lottery.
You REALLY owe it to yourself to see an eclipse at your next opportunity. If you’ve seen a partial eclipse using glasses, you’ve seen about 10% of it.
Mark your calendars for 2024. You’ll thank me, I promise."
I ordered eclipse glasses on July 31 and realized only on Thursday that they had never arrived–too late to find any (we called and looked in person in at least 10 7-Elevens, in NY, VA, MD as well as at the Air and Space Museum in DC) Also it was too late to order them online since we would be on the road.
We had to be in Baltimore in the afternoon and saw that Johns Hopkins, a couple of miles from where we needed to be, was holding an eclipse viewing party, with glasses provided. So we headed there and saw from the road that it looked fairly crowded, but figured it would be our only chance to see it through glasses.
We found parking blocks away and started to walk though campus, stopped for a drink of water and saw a family, mom and dad and 3 or 4 kids who each had their pair of glasses–it seemed like they had been watching for a while since some of them didn’t have them on any more. The parents smiled at us and I said “Oh, you’re the lucky ones who managed to get glasses, the ones we ordered never arrived.” Immediately they asked us if we wanted to take a look and we thanked them and took a glance. It was around 10 minutes after the peak so the sun must have been around 75% covered, and we were quite impressed.
This is probably a big reason why I’ve been confused about why everyone’s been going mad over the eclipse for the last month or so. I live in Arizona, see…and we apparently (I had to look it up just now) only got a 66% cover up. Yeahhh, I just slept through it. Nothing amazing, IMO. Regular day. I knew it would be after seeing photos of the projected path, which was far from anywhere in Arizona. No doubt it was great for those who actually lived in places (or had the means to travel to one of them) where they got more than, say, 94 percent.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the one in 2024 was far from us as well…course, in 2024, I could be living somewhere else. Or dead.
I’m such an optimist!
No totality here, but the change in light was pretty cool, especially since the sun was near its highest point in the sky. Partial eclipse light seems pretty different from clouds and haze.
I made a makeshift pinhole camera, and then didn’t use it so much, for a cool reason: I found that shadows (dapples?) cast by the light through the trees showed the shape of the visible sun. I somehow didn’t expect that to be such a prevalent effect.
Actually, speaking of pretty cool things, there was a sort of literal cool wind, too. It got muggy and hot later.
I did look directly at the eclipse once, because I am a fool. Of course, looking at the sun through a completely clear sky, shortly before high noon, just long enough to bring the sun and moon into focus, meant immediate burning pain.