Can I flag up something here for people just going “for the show” and maybe to take a few photos?
Please, please, please, if you are using a compact camera or just a phone, please TURN OFF your automatic flash. Leaving the flash enabled won’t help you to take a better photo of the sun or of the surrounding landscape, but it WILL affect the photos of serious amateur astronomers trying to get the best shots of the corona, the prominences etc. Also a flash going off will affect the dark adaptation of your own eyes (as well as people around you) so you won’t see all the subtle effects.
Thanks for the heads up. I’ll make sure my flash is off.
Oh god, the forecast is starting to look terrible in San Antonio/Kerrville.
It is way too soon to trust any forecast. Don’t panic yet.
Look at the sky about halfway through the waxing partial eclipse phase. Make your own forecast then.
Anything else is irrelevant guesswork.
I’m looking to be in Kouchibouguac National Park hanging on a beach and watching. Currently forecasting sun with areas of high clouds (I know we are very far out but fingers crossed). It has the added advantage of being a dark sky preserve so I’m hoping for a good show!
Easy for you to say!
@commasense: Just say “hootchy cootchy”. It’s probably close enough. 
I too had to look up where that was as I had no inkling. One things for sure, you won’t have to worry about smoggy skies. The blowing snow might be an issue.
In a fun development, I will be on the beach in Mazatlán in Mexico, where the path of totality first touches land. You will be at the beach in Kouchibouguac National Park in Canada where the path of totality last touches land. No one but ships will see it before me or after you.
The eclipse max point will get to me at ~1806 UTC and to you at ~1936, so ~90 minutes later.
I’m pretty sure you are/will be the only Doper going to Kouchibouguac, and so far I’m the only one I know of going to Mazatlán. I have no doubt I’ll encounter a bigger crowd than you will.
Just call us the “bookend boys” for this whole extended DopeFest. 
One year, a truly awful 7-day forecast came out a week before the Big Annual Event™ & someone asked my boss what he was going to do. Boss responded with, “Smile”
A very confused, “Why would you smile with that forecast?” was answered with
The weather forecasters are never right this far out, so if they’re calling for awful it’ll only get better, which makes me smile.
That’s correct. At the edges, it may just last a matter of seconds, but at the center, for most of the track it’s >4 minutes.
I’m not a man.
I also got a surprise visit from Aunt Flo on eclipse day, at age 53 after a few years of intermittent spotting. Since I got my breast cancer diagnosis a few months later, I really think The Big Dude Upstairs knew that I would need that information (last menstrual period) and decided to let me know in a very big way.
If the same thing happens THIS time, then I’ll be worried.
I just Googled that, and in addition to guessing correctly that it was North Of The Border, the first tab on Google was “Pronunciation.”
For those who want to look, it’s about 25 miles SE of Miramichi, NB. I have an online friend in Halifax whose parents live there, and he’s thinking about taking the day off to go there.
I picked up 2 pairs of eclipse glasses, 1 for me and 1 for my husband, at our local library, and 2 pairs for our kids at one of the NY State Thruway rest stops. Fingers crossed for a decent day in upstate NY, and if there are clouds, for them not to be too thick!
In Portland we will get a 1/4 eclipse and a 60% chance of rain on that day.
We’ll be watching it on the Weather Channel.
I’m breathing a big sigh of relief… The 1000 pairs of eclipse glasses I ordered for my school arrived today, and we (me and the two student leaders of the Astronomy Club) did a brisk business distributing them at lunch. We had some snafus with that (like a supplier that tried to bait and switch us into twice their listed price), so it was a major load off to actually get them in hand, a couple of days before Spring Break.
Yes, even a two-day or even 24-hour forecast can be unreliable. Mother Nature teased me with bright sunny skies for the past couple of days, and today was gloomy and totally overcast. And that’s how it’s going to go. Paying a bit more attention to the weather than usual these last few weeks, my observation is that it’s sunny about 40% of the time, completely overcast another 40% of the time, and mixed sun and cloud about 20% of the time.
ETA: The current forecast goes to April 1. The current gloom turns to rain tomorrow, then three sunny days in succession, then partly cloudy March 31 and overcast April 1. Which is completely useless info, but there it is.
That’s what we did on Nebraska in 2017. It became mostly cloudy where we were, York NE. We could see mostly clear skies to the far northwest, so we jumped into our cars and took some smaller highways for 30 miles until we saw mostly clear skies in Aurora (apt name).
We stopped at a McDonald’s parking lot at about 85% eclipse coverage. They sent one of their employees out to the parking lot with glasses of water, and assured us they were chasing people outside during totality.
The day before the eclipse we visited Homestead NP, where the Planetary Society had its big event with Bill Nye, with over 10,000 attending on the big day. They had clouds and light rain, but some breaks in the clouds during totality, supposedly caused by the drop in temperature.
This year the Planetary Society is holding a very pricey three-day event, which is a shame. It’s priced like a corporate retreat or big sporting event. Is anyone here planning on going there?
I’m another who had to look up Kouchibouguac National Park. I’ve been to New Brunswick before but hadn’t heard of that park before.
Today I breathed a sigh of relief because my flip down eclipse filters that clip onto a baseball cap arrived today. I am set. I have several of the cheap cardboard eyeglasses, and my binoculars filters are ready to go.
We leave tomorrow for our road trip to Texas. We’ll take the scenic route there, 4 nights in Pasadena CA with my mom and brother, and 3 nights in Las Vegas because I got a steal of a deal. We’re not into gambling. We’ll visit some museums there, and Hoover Dam.
I hope everyone has good weather for where they’ll be!
I live in NB and have a hard time pronouncing, let alone spelling Kouchibouguac. 
I’m in Moncton, NB. I could scoot about 15 min outside of town for a view but the park is just over an hour away and I think will be worth the trip.
I leave Tue. It’ll be fun if folks post some of their eclipse road trip adventures here.