Lucky you! Hopefully your skies will be clear.
Yes, this is where I have to invest some time convincing my brother to NOT retire and move away from Rochester. Not just yet, at least. And it’s a Monday at the tail end of Spring Break, Easter is March 31st that year, so Kid Cheesesteak only has to miss one day of school.
In the last eclipse, I went to my brother’s house. At the time, he lived in south Salem OR, just a very short ways from the centerline of the eclipse. I live in the Portland area, but don’t have a car. But it was only maybe 60 miles away, so I rode by bicycle down on the day before. Took about 4 hours.
For this next one, cycling would be a bit more of a challenge. At a very rough guess, it’d take about 6 weeks to ride to Texas. Maybe more. I’ve never done a multi-day cross-country ride before. And I’d have to leave in February, which isn’t the greatest month to be riding over mountains. Have to think about this.
You want to be closer to the centerline. You don’t get much totality at the edge, maybe just a few seconds. At the centerline, it’ll be about 4 minutes.
If the schools have any sense, they’ll be closed anyway. When this first came on everyone’s radar, I told my students that school would probably be closed, but that if it wasn’t, I’d be very disappointed in any student who DIDN’T skip school that day to watch it.
If schools had sense, they’d make a field trip out of it.
Obviously, if they are hundreds of miles from the path, then the probably wouldn’t or shouldn’t, but should still allow an excused absence for any student who is going to it.
If they are in a more reasonable position, they should organize a field trip to observe totality.
If they are in the path, they should suspend class during the event and have everyone go outside. Starting a bit before it starts to a bit after.
Hopefully, the weather on that day will be better than today.
Personally, I am at the very southern edge of totality, but it’s only about a 45 minute drive to the center. I’ve kinda scoped out a couple of parks in the path, but it’s hard to say how crowded they will be during the eclipse. I’m probably not the only one with access to google maps.
There’s the Carmageddon Effect (my name for it) that will probably be in play. That’s when there’s a lot of predictions in the local media or social media about something that will cause lots of traffic in a certain area at a certain time. So lots of people avoid that area and the traffic there is not that bad. Sometimes even better than usual. I’ve seen it happen a number of times, including the last eclipse.
For the 1998 eclipse on the island of Guadeloupe, the kids were told to stay in bed with their blinds drawn, for the entire day, out of fear of going blind.
For the rest of us, it was a spectacular eclipse. Totally clear skies from first contact to last.
In 2017, I was in Hopkinsville, KY. The traffic prior to the eclipse was ok, since people arrived at different times. But the traffic immediately following the eclipse was a nightmare, with everyone leaving at once. I avoided it by staying an extra day.
2024 will be my fifth Totality, weather permitting. I’ll have to just step outside and look up.
My 2017 experience was very similar, traffic-wise. Horrendous traffic when leaving! Everybody leaving at once.
The eclipse expert Fred Espenak at Sky & Telescope has a good map showing % coverage if you’re off the totality path. I snapped it to imgur.
I was talking to a class of Clevelanders when I said that, all of whom would be on or close to the path of totality.
For the 2017 one, we went to visit my uncle in Georgia, who was very close to totality. He knew the area well enough to be able to pick out a spot right on the center of the path, but which most folks wouldn’t find. I was almost a little disappointed: I was all set for demonstrations and activities for groups before and during the event, but it turned out that there was just one family there besides mine, and they weren’t even there most of the day, having fled from clouds at another nearby location (we just barely lucked out: The clouds didn’t reach us until about a minute after the end of totality).
Traffic was still terrible going home, though.
I may drive over the bridge and down into The County (Prince Edward County, the bit that sticks out into Lake Ontario south of Belleville) to get closer to the centre of the totality belt. Sandbanks provincial park would be a great place to watch it. Probably crowded as heck though… maybe pull over on some random stretch of road.
Excellent guidance. You’re the kind of teacher I wish I had!
Fred Espenak has always been my go-to expert in all things eclipse.
Interesting how its going thorough southern Illinois again (again meaning the 2017 eclipse). Maybe I’ll actually make it down there this next time.
Yes. Traffic before the eclipse tends to be spread over hours: some like to get set up early, others at the last minute.
But the end of totality is like the flag drop at LeMans: nearly everyone plans to hit the road within minutes. Much hassle can be avoided if you plan differently.
We had a music convention that our college band was invited to perform at in late February 1979 in Winnipeg. Our concert was Saturday and we were scheduled to return to South Dakota on Sunday. However our band director discovered that the 1979 eclipse passing over Winnipeg was Monday, so he got permission and funding for us to stay an extra night.
Some students complained that they needed to return early so they could study for midterms. He originally planned to have half of the busses leave Sunday and the others Monday, but later said “No, everyone needs to stay and see this.”
Monday morning came chilly and clear and amazing! I overheard some of the students who had wanted to return early giddy with excitement about how it was the most amazing thing they had ever seen!
He was a good director and professor.
Obligatory XKCD cartoon.
Xavier Jubier’s site has a countdown. Today, this total solar eclipse is 700 days away:
And here’s a link to the thread about September’s annular solar eclipse:
The mention of weather is depressing. Around here April is a period of relatively unstable weather, when it starts seriously transitioning to summer. The chances of clear skies for the total eclipse are only on the order of about 50%. There is an average of 13 days with at least some rain during a typical April.
My students and I are reading Indian Creek Chronicles by Pete Fromm, a memoir about the author’s time spent during the winter of 1978-1979 alone in a tent in the Selway-Bitterroot wilderness of eastern Idaho. He witnessed the 1979 total eclipse from a mountaintop, dozens of miles from the nearest human, and he writes that the wildlife fell completely silent during the eclipse as if none of the forest critters knew what to make of the sudden darkness.