Based on our experience in 2017, no. Don’t forget that within the zone of totality the eclipse is happening everywhere. And the zone of totality is huge (on the human scale). So there’s no one place that everyone’s heading to.
Now, there are some places where large crowds will be gathering, e.g., the stadium where the Cleveland Guardians are playing their season opener (mentioned above) and parks that are hosting major events. But for the most part, getting in shouldn’t be too big a problem, except maybe just before they open the gates or just before the eclipse starts. So don’t wait till the last minute.
Getting out of these places will be like trying to leave any large stadium-type event: slow at first, then dispersing in all directions. But unless you have a plane to catch right after the eclipse (not recommended), you can just wait out the crowds like tailgaters at sporting events.
So I don’t think traffic should be a major concern, with a few specific local exceptions.
In 2017, we went to Carbondale, IL for the TSE and what should have been a six hour drive home was more like 12-14 hours with traffic that backed up I-57 for the lower 2/3s of the state. Granted, that was having everyone in the Chicago area who wanted to see it on a single main stretch of highway so other areas might not have had the same traffic impact.
This year, I was lazy about making plans and wasn’t even sure if I was going to go but my older son (who I took last time) was asking about it so I made late plans to drive a few hours downstate, get a hotel room then drive a few hours east the next morning over the state line into Indiana. I’m still debating if we should try to get into Vincennes, IN (4min totality) early in the morning and hang around or just try to find an unoccupied patch of cornfield roadside shoulder for the event. Or maybe the weather will be thunderstorms all day and solve it for me (I hope not but it would certainly make the choice easier).
The return trip would still be on I-57 but at least we’ll have a head start on the Carbondale people.
The one warning I’ve heard about cheap eclipse glasses is that if they get scratched the scratch can let dangerous amounts of light through. So check your glasses immediately before use, and maybe have a spare on hand, just in case.
Despite the fact that commasense makes sense with their point, generally speaking, I’m in SE Michigan and I’m guessing everybody who has the same idea as me in my area will be jamming I-75, so I may have Jophiel’s experience. I’ll probably research some alternate routes just in case. Nobody thinks to take the lesser highways in these situations.
Thanks for the invite! Unfortunately that would take me much farther east than I really need to drive to see the totality, and I may have a friend with me that may have his own ideas of where to go for the viewing. But I’ll keep your invite in mind!
The day of the 2017 eclipse I was looking at Google Maps, and all along the eclipse track across the whole country the roads were solid red for most of the day after the eclipse, well into the evening. I didn’t try to travel until the next day. Traffic was heavier than normal but not too bad.
I think this and related posts may have convinced me to drive north even if it is cloudy on the day. (I live about 10 miles south of the totality line.)
I suspect a lot of other people think so also; and therefore that it’s going to be either extremely crowded or restricted access. Or both.
See above in this post.
I’d plan to stay mostly to the back roads; but have no idea what the traffic will be like, especially near good places to pull over. And there are a couple of spots where I’ll have to be at least briefly on what passes for a main road around here, or to cross one. But mostly it’s farm country for that ten miles and much of the next twenty or so. – center line’s way out in a very large lake unless I also go significantly east, I won’t be trying to get there.
I think the issue is, was it somewhere that’s going to have most of the traffic funneled into one main road that the person on this thread can’t readily avoid, or was it somewhere with secondary (state two-lane) and back roads (county and town) providing a route, maybe with small villages to get across on the way?
Major interstates? State roads? County and town roads? – if you were looking at the whole country or sizeable chunks of it on Google Maps, the latter and some of the state roads are going to be invisible. Roads disappear whenever you scale up.
I think I was looking mainly at major roads, although I zoomed in on a few areas. I remember being impressed by the band of red across the whole country. I’m sure I didn’t study every minor road across the whole track. Google Maps doesn’t seem to supply historical traffic data, but this site claims to have scraped that data. It requires registering which I don’t feel like doing, but you might want to do that if you’re interested in studying exactly what happened in 2017.
Once the main highway clots, Google / Apple will start sending cars down all those alternate routes too. Everybody has a map app on their phone and even if they don’t use it every day, they’ll sure turn it on when stuck in what seems to be an endless stationary traffic jam.
Some fraction of drivers will refuse to leave the emotional safety of the main highway despite Google’s exhortations. But the apps will keep funneling people off onto the side roads until those too are jammed.
Unrelated to the above …
An issue in many areas of the country is that minor roads are surrounded by forest and private land. Finding a place to pull over, and get a good view of the sky unobstructed by trees, may be darn hard even if there are only a few like-minded cars.
When I lived in the exurbs of St. Louis, a day trip out into hilly ruralia was fun. But you could drive 10 miles down random county road Q and only find 3 spots that could park 2 cars each and also have a view of the sky. It takes very few cars on the scale of a major metro area to overwhelm areas that can park ~1 car per ~1 mile of roadway.
This is true. Also, in 2017 my Google Maps and Waze apps ground to a standstill as a bajillion cars in one area all tried to access it at once. They got very sporadic about tracking my progress or things around me.
The safest bet is to assume you’ll be in your car a good while and/or find alternate lodgings until the next day.
I’m flying to my mother-in-law’s house in Kentucky for the weekend, then driving to Evansville, IN for the eclipse. My work has a division there, so private parking area, secluded location, etc.
Well, that may keep some people out of the way of someone who will be going by a combination of paper maps and some knowledge of the area.
That is a point about those apps sending people off the main roads if those are jammed. I hadn’t thought of that.
I’m not going to head north further than it would take me to get back at a reasonable hour on the same day, in the same traffic I’m getting on the day. So at worst I should be back home at an unreasonable hour on the same day.
Does seem like I should leave considerably early, though, and with a full gas tank. And with something to do if I find what seems like a good spot a couple of hours ahead of time.
– anybody else looking at somewhere around the Geneva/Clifton Springs/Lyons area (NY State)? I doubt I’d get further north than Lyons, and I’d be trying to move on the back roads and avoid both the major roads and the cities, as much as possible. I probably will try to at least get north of 5&20, unless they’re so jammed up as to make that impractical.
Thanks, @thorny_locust, that’s what I was hoping @Just_Asking_Questions would explain. If there’s one major artery leading into a city that everyone will have to take, that will obviously lead to congestion.
But as I mentioned before, as long as you don’t have to hit the road immediately, you can just wait out the congestion (assuming you don’t have to take an extremely congested artery). Keep an eye on Google Maps / Waze, and go when it’s over, or at least the worst of it is.
Among the things I learned from my wife’s uncle, a astronomer and eclipse chaser who had seen 20 when he served as our family’s team leader in 2017, is that you want to find a place you can legally and comfortably hang out for a few hours. That means you will want a rest room and perhaps other amenities, like a picnic table.
A wide open view, preferably at the top of a hill or rise, is also good. If you have a good enough view, you can see the shadow approaching and/or departing.
I’m planning on a trip back to Austin for the eclipse. We’ll be staying at a friend’s farm in Dripping Springs, which might be pretty good for seeing the eclipse, but we’re kinda thinking about driving to Fredericksburg to see totality… I’m just afraid that everyone else will have the same idea.
It seems to me that my thinking about everyone not going to the same place at the same time applies more to the getting there than the getting home. Once it’s over, everyone wants to go, so there’s a lot of people on the move at once. Traffic ensues.
But getting in place occurs over many hours before the eclipse. Anyone who has a one-hour drive and leaves their house an hour before the eclipse starts, or worse, before totality, is looking for trouble, especially if the weather is variable. But if you plan to be at your viewing location at least a couple of hours before it starts, I wouldn’t expect, in most cases, to hit a lot of traffic, unless there’s a significant bottleneck that a lot of people have to pass through.
