I’ll be at the festival in Burnet. Assuming it’s cloudy on Eclipse Day as the current forecast predicts, while it’s technically possible for us to bail and drive someplace with better weather, it’s not very practical. We will just grumble and accept whatever weather gets thrown at us.
Wait a minute, we have VIP tickets for the festival! That guarantees a good view of the eclipse, right?
I’m related to a meteorologist (watch my posts, I promise I’ll warn you before one hits Earth). He says that any longer than three days away, they’re guessing.
I’m counting on that, because all the sites I was planning on driving through a week from now are listed as 55-75% cloud cover at 2pm, 4/8.
Mild bummer: the place we’ve rented shows a dock going into the lake. The owners said that the dock has been taken in for the winter and won’t be re-deployed until later in the month due to risk of freezing. Oh well. There ought to be a number of good spots to watch it there anyway.
I just got back from skiing in Stowe, Vermont, which will be in the path of totality next week. The hotel I stayed at is completely sold out for next weekend, of course. Despite the path of totality being within driving distance of my house here in Connecticut, my plan for the last seven years (since the last U.S. total solar eclipse in 2017) has been to fly to Texas to visit my mom and extended family and to see the eclipse while maximizing the chance for a clear skies. I booked plane tickets and a hotel months ago.
Now the latest forecast is showing clear skies here in the northeast and cloudy skies with scattered showers and thunderstorms in central Texas. Exactly the opposite of historical trends. 
Gift link:
I just saw an article, by “the world’s only solar eclipse journalist”, saying that a revised map of totality means that some places formerly in the path are now in the partial zone.
The article linked below provides a link to the new map in the 4th paragraph, “recently published by John Irwin”, but I can’t get it to work.
Apparently, the eclipse expert’s site with the revised map was overwhelmed and exceeded the host’s bandwidth limits, and is no longer available. 
Still advertising cirrostratus for me on the 8th. Uggh.
I fly there solo tomorrow, so not much road trip adventure along the way. I hope. Two hops, one plane change, and I left extra time at the intermediate hub to accommodate possible delays on the first leg. The 0330 wake-up will not be welcome, but that should be the hardest part of the day right there. 
The adventure begins after I get there. Should be to the hotel late afternoon local time, well before dinner. Should.
It’s April 1st?
The Washington Post, for reasons entirely unclear to me, has coded its expected cloud coverage map so that blue is lots of clouds, while clear skies are a sort of muddy orange.
The picture in my area is rainy weather starting tomorrow and persisting for most of the week, then a mix of sun and cloud on the 6th and 7th, which is as far as it goes. This seems to match up with the WaPo map guesstimating around 50% cloud cover. So there’s hope, but looks like it may be uncertain right to the last minute.
In my area it’s rain starting today or tomorrow and continuing for most of the week, shifting to snow near the end; then starting to clear Saturday and mostly sun Sunday. Monday’s not quite in that forecast yet.
But by the nature of the area climate it will indeed be uncertain right to the last minute; though by a day or two ahead I’ll start putting more faith in it. Still, it does look hopeful right now. The question is, is this an alternating several-days-wet-several-days-dry pattern (fairly common around here); or is it what I call the receding-sun forecast (in which there’s always sun forecasted for several days in the future, but by the time you get to those days there’s more rain and the sun forecast has moved to several days in the further future – also unfortunately pretty common around here, mostly when the ground’s already too wet for fieldwork. Its counterpart, the receding-rain forecast, also happens when the weather’s been too dry for some time.)
I have till the 3rd to cancel without penalty and I’m seriously considering doing just that. Very disappointing but I don’t want to spend a week in San Antonio alone, in the pouring rain and not even get to see the eclipse. I would have considered flying in but driving somewhere else that’s supposed to be clear but I’ve not had any luck trying to rent a vehicle. Nobody has gotten back to me.
It will be mightily vexing to millions if the geometrically most favorable eclipse in North America in decades is largely trashed by weather.
I know I’ll be vexed if my little bit is.
For anyone who has plans in place but is considering canceling because of the forecast, I strongly urge you to go no matter what. First, you never know what the weather will be until the actual time. A cloudy morning could clear up minutes before.
I used to drive my car on race tracks and lots of people would cancel if it looked like rain. Then it didn’t rain, or didn’t rain much, and they missed a day they could have gotten in some track time.
Second, for an eclipse, IME, less than perfect weather isn’t a deal killer. When we went to Kansas for the 2017 eclipse, it happened to cloud over a few hours before. Even so, it was a life-changing experience. For some of the time the cloud cover was thin enough before and during totality that we could watch without glasses. Even when we couldn’t see the sun at all during totality, the sudden darkening, the effect of sunrise 360 degree around us, and other effects were amazing. We were all very excited.
Would perfect weather have been better? Of course. Were we sorry we had gone to the trouble we did just to have this experience? Not at all.
And of course, you can try to chase clear skies a few hours before the start, if your location isn’t promising once you’re there. (In 2017 we were a party of 10, some over 80, in three vehicles. So that wasn’t an option for us.)
Track days happen regularly, so missing one wasn’t a very big deal. There won’t be another solar eclipse in North America for 20 years. Just think how you’ll feel if you cancel and then the weather turns out good to perfect.
Just do it.
I don’t have any way to chase it and also I’ll be there for a week in terrible weather. I’ve just finished a Canadian winter - I want some heat and sunshine! I am trying to get to Mazatlan but I’m not getting my hopes too high at this point. I have an appointment with a travel agent this afternoon. I have two more days to cancel without fees so I haven’t actually cancelled yet. But I’d say the chance of cancellation is equivalent to the chance of rain/cloud/thunderstorms!
Has anyone else here witnessed an eclipse under less-than-ideal circumstances, and care to share their experiences?
What’s the highest point in the zone of totality? Mt. Megantic (southern Quebec) is 3,615 ft high, with an observatory on top, so it will be a popular place since it’s right on the “line”. Access to the peak will be limited, however.
I’m trying to decide at this point if it’s worth it for me and my adult son to fly halfway across the country to Texas when we could just drive somewhere here in the northeast. Of course “drive somewhere” means 4-6 hours of driving from Connecticut. And of course I have no place to stay overnight here in the northeast. (I made hotel reservations in San Antonio instead.)
However, I also don’t want to leave my mom (who lives in Houston and who I was planning to meet up with) in the lurch. I may talk to her tonight and see how she feels. She may not want to make the drive from Houston to the centerline if it’s going to be a washout.
I’m trying to say that for something that is, for most people, a once-in-a-lifetime event, a chance of a “washout” is shouldn’t be a reason to bail, especially when a “washout” can also be a pretty amazing experience.
Ah, but if the forecast is suddenly for clearer skies close(-ish) to home, I might reconsider.
Me, I’m going (SW Indiana) anyhoo.
I’ve now planned enough “roadside attractions” along the way, and have stocked up on a wide variety of audiobooks, so even an eclipse-less trip would be delightful (hey, a pun…).
Plus, a long solo trip without anyone backseat driving (or rolling their eyes when I see a used bookstore on the map) sounds pretty therapeutic.
I plan to be in Kerrville TX for it, but if the weather looks to be bad there that morning, I will drive that morning to where the weather is best. Roughly figuring, given the available time that morning I can go about 300 miles from Kerrville to where the weather forecast is best. No guarantees that the skies will be clear for me, but I think my likelihood is good. I don’t have my passport with me so I can’t drive into Mexico, about 125 miles to the SW. (I’ve driven thousands of miles in Mexico and do enjoy it there. Alas, that’s not for this week.)
For the 2017 eclipse I posted this information back then, and it is still relevant for this week —
The earth gets a total solar eclipse (TSE) about once every 18 months, and those TSEs are viewable by about one half of one percent of the earth’s surface. Less than 30% of solar eclipses are totals. The rest are partials (35.3%) or annulars (33.2%). TSEs are 26.7% of the solar eclipses.
TSEs are more rare than total lunar eclipses.
Because the moon is constantly moving farther away from the earth, eventually there will be no more TSEs. But that’s about a billion years from now so it shouldn’t bother any of us.
This 5-min video explains why TSEs are so special ➜
