That was the first time I’d ever witnessed a total eclipse and it was rather surreal and awe inspiring. It was like God was messing with the dimmer switch in the dining room.
I’m in Memphis where there was only 98% coverage. Still the most in my lifetime. I’m sick with a sinus infection and couldn’t travel so it was the best I could do. The change in the quality of light was surreal. The shadows were even different than I had seen before. It made for some interesting pictures.
My neighbor was working in his yard so I offered him an extra pair of glasses. He was so excited. He’s almost 80 and had never looked at an eclipse before! It was nice to be able to share the experience with him. I still want to see totality. I just have to wait until 2045. 
Back home. Was a great view. Only one wispy cloud that stayed away until the very last seconds of totality. A completely unobstructed view. We found a little parking lot and a footbridge/walking path just as we were coming into Bouctouche so stopped there instead of the planned Dunes boardwalk area. I couldn’t pass up a guaranteed parking spot and 360 degree view. As an added bonus we discovered friends from Halifax in the area so got to spend the build up and event with them.
For everyone, like myself, that feared that the totality would be obscured by clouds only to have the clouds lift at just the right time, our local meteorologist has an explanation.
“An eclipse can drop temperatures between 5 and 15 degrees. This impacts local cloud cover and can help clear the skies!” Emily Sutton KFOR
This Weather Channel announcer was very happy when it happened.
Don’t know why it was so dark, though.
We kept telling ourselves that. My friend even found an app or site showing cloud cover across the country, and it showed a clear area following along right behind the beginning of the eclipse.
Then she said ‘it stopped moving’. And the clouds where we were just got thicker and thicker.
We got to see the beginning of the partial, inbetween clouds; but the rest of the eclipse, including totality, was entirely obscured. So totality was just – dark, rather suddenly, and briefly, in the middle of the day. The cat present onsite didn’t seem to notice and the chickens didn’t make an obvious fuss, either when it went dark or when totality ended. The peepers did start up briefly. Then it got lighter. And started to rain.
The traffic wasn’t anywhere near as bad as expected, in either direction. The site was great, the people were friendly, a good time was had by all. Everything was fine but the clouds . . .
Totality split my town in two. My old house was on the path, but my new one wasn’t. But we had the bright idea to check our storage place, and it was in totality.
It was fun. Things never went “black and white,” but more had a yellow cast on everything, like sunset without the red. An intersting thing happened when it got dark, though: I have some issues with morning depression, that gets better at night. And the same thing that made the animals start their bedtime songs made that depression abate!
I’m very impressed at the pictures you guys got. I tried both through glasses, and got nothing. I took a picture with my pinhole viewer, and the same sun that looked like a crescent to me was still a circle to my camera.
And I even tried a pic just at the start of totality. And it still was just a circle, with no corona or hole.
I did get the Bailey’s beads, and there was a little bead of light the whole time, just at different spots. I tried to find the crescent shadows, but didn’t see any. Nor that wavy effect that can happen. But it still was great!
Traffic was fine going and coming, until we got close to home and had to stop for a bit. We came back during the partial, because the partial would still be visible from our house–and it had a lot more nature around it.
I then went out and watched the last 15 minutes with my glasses (closing my eyes or looking down for a bit every minute or so) to see the eclipse completely end.
(I had an app that timed it down to the second, or I would have thought it ended up to a minute earlier.)
One weird thing: the light phenomena only seemed to happen one way. The yellow tint didn’t seem to come back when the eclipse was abating. Though we did wait until it was no longer noticeably darker than day to go back home.
Oh, and it was completely clear skies here, as forecasted starting about three days ago
It goes either way: Drop in sunlight = drop in temperature and condensation (fog/clouds) happens.
From what I saw on the net, the folks in Niagara got a lucky break in fairly (and seasonal) clouds for 10s. Parts of Ontario just got clouded out entirely while parts of Maine were clear as day.
For both of my TSE’s condensation/cloud cover came out of nowhere and for one (Bucharest) it took a crazy 50K drive with a young taxi driver (and 3 Uni students who spoke english) to get to the pig farm where the clouds were thin - after three days of 90+ cloudless days in Bucharest proper. In fact, even though I had a scope my favourite picture is a 35mm of us, the pig farmer and a half-crescent sun that you kind of need to magnify to notice.
Today I experienced not one miracle, but two.
I had decided not to drive down to my friend’s place because of the persistent forecasts for continuing overcast in this whole part of Ontario, but then changed my mind and figured, why not. We can at least watch it get really dark under overcast skies.
I got there two hours before eclipse time and we sat around chatting and commiserating about the weather. As the time arrived, the eclipse began, and the overcast had not changed one bit. After a while I told my friend that I thought I could see a vague bit of blue off in the distance, but he said it was wishful thinking.
And then blue sky broke out all over with a suddenness I had never seen, and bright sunlight shone upon us like some great deity had worked a miracle. We were as giddy as little kids because it was now obvious that with only a few scattered slow-moving clouds off in the distance, we would have a clear view of the eclipse! We were very, very lucky in the midst of general overcast in the region. We went out with our eclipse glasses and the moon had already obscured 1/3 of the sun.
Absolutely amazing experience. The famous cold of totality set in quite a bit before totality actually occurred, and I had to go in to get my jacket. As totality approaches, the sunlight retains the usual strong shadows of a clear day but takes on a ghostly dim glow. Because only a small sliver of the sun provides a lot of light, though, when totality hits it gets dark really, really fast. I regretted not have any decent camera equipment. I snapped some pictures of totality and the “diamond ring” with my cheap phone, but they’re blurred and pretty terrible. But still, they’re mine, and a wonderful memento of my first (and possibly only) total eclipse of the sun.
We had chosen Georgetown Texas, north of Austin, about four months ago, based on hotel availability. The forecast for today was mostly cloudy, so we looked at nearby locations. The forecast for Waco was mostly sunny, so we drove north 60 miles there (no traffic delays going or returning). They had about 50% cloud cover, gradually improving in the hour leading up to totality. It became totally clear at totality, and we had a spectacular view. Plus Waco had 4m16s of totality!! It was my third eclipse, but the son-in-law’s; I love hearing the “Wow” from first-timers.
Never-mind the photos. beowuflf (above) and bullitt have the equipment to capture all the phases, pop the lens off at totality and get it all. It’s 90% about the experience and stories of how the clouds parted just for you.
You’re absolutely right. Plus the pictures taken by professional astronomers. It’s easy to waste too much time fiddling with equipment. In truth, I was so excited by the totality that I had forgotten all about the fact that I at least had a cheap phone, rushed into the house to get it, and wildly snapped a few pics. I probably shouldn’t have even bothered but the personal memento is nice.
I’ll stop posting so much, esp. while those who went somewhere are headed back on home.
I took some fairly decent 35mm photos of the 1999 eclipse yet as I just said above, my favourite is the Romanian tripod-mounted selfie of me, taxi driver, 3 uni students and of course the (bewilldered?) pig farmer, my little Celestron in the foreground and a (if you magnify) not quite round sun taken in the aftermath,
Was clear in the morning, then got some clouds right around the max (49.9%) time. Clouds on and off afterwards. Fun, but nothing like totality.
Sister in Ontario and brother who drove to Missouri had great views of totality.
I too got to experience this, in Indiana! The time from the noticeable plunging-into-darkness to totality was just 30 seconds. My handheld pinhole imager–held over a clipboard–suddenly had no image. So I looked up. O M G
Torrential rain in Waco right now.
I’d say we were very luck today.
Great pics and an awesome setup .
We were supposedly in a ~67% partial zone. But it seemed a lot more was covered. Just a thin crescent. A bit hazzy but no real clouds.
The weird light made things seem gray only not really. Just “odd” in some undefinable way. Too early for leaves on trees and nothing else around to produce a spattering of crescents on the ground.
So, two really good partials in about 5 months. Not bad. But not as good as my 2017 experience, natch.
Really cool and comfortable from our backyard. Somewhere like 93% I think. Had a wonderful experience viewing totality 7 yrs ago, and didn’t feel like dealing w/ the traffic. My wife had her scope set up. Neat sunspot, huh?
Anyone who drove - how was traffic after? I have never seen the likes of the traffic we encountered after the last one.
Yeah, all of the trees around here were either too dense, or still bare, so I couldn’t find any good spots for crescent shadows, and we didn’t get the wavy-shimmers, either (though I saw them in 2017).