Around 3:18 Eastern Time, the moon will block the sun and Totality will be achieved. Western NY is on the Path of Totality and a million visitors are filling all the local hotels and Airbnbs. Patrick and Katie drove home to experience this event (the next Solar Eclipse is 20 years from now). We also have my niece from Virginia, her husband, and her two kids (3 and six months) staying in our Guest Room. We have our approved Solar Eclipse glasses so we are ready for the Big Moment.
Have you ever witnessed an eclipse?
I saw one a long time ago, but I forget what type! Usually, it’s too cloudy around here to see stars, much less a major celestial occurrence! I hear that if you watch it wearing 3-D glasses it’ll be twice as exciting!
Bob, I tried to pick up a pair of 3-D Eclipse glasses but they were all sold out!
I’ll probably miss this one, George. I’ll be in the car rider line as the middle school gets out just as the eclipse hits here. I know there will probably be a number of them foolhardy enough to stare directly at it; I can only hope the school has warned them sufficiently.
The evil part of me is hoping that our Orange Quisling leaves the courtroom long enough to stare at the eclipse for a full four minutes.
I have done eclipses before, so if I miss this one, I’ll just wait the forty or fifty or whatever years until the next really great one…
Jerry, the roads are clogged with traffic here. I don’t plan to leave my house today other than to check out the Eclipse this afternoon. Patrick and Katie drive east tomorrow morning.
Never a full one. Good luck with the cloud cover today, as the forecast could be better. I think Patti has a better chance in Detroit, based on the forecast I’ve seen, and they are just out of the “totality” zone (for some reason, Jackie finds that phrase pretentious – Zone of Totality sounds like a James Bond movie), and at 99%, she could have a better view than the rest of us. NYC is going to be at just under 90%, and there is a decent chance we’ll have mostly clear skies.
One thing I’ve noticed it, despite the incredible amount of hype, in New York at least there has been little attention paid to safety glasses. The libraries have given them out, but I’d have expected CVS and Walgreens and the like to have them. If they have, I certainly haven’t heard about it. We’re going to try and get them at the library this morning.
I hope you will be blasting Bonnie Tyler at 3:20 pm!
Jeff, Maine apparently has the best view of the Eclipse today. But, the weather guessers claim the clouds may part at 3:18 and the view here should be spectacular…or it’s all hype.
Heading down across the border to Toledo where it will be closer to totality although still off by a smidge but that’s good enough for me. Honestly I’m already so tired of hearing and dodging news stories about it that it’ll be nice when it’s over. Enjoy.
Byron, Holy Toledo! I didn’t know northern Ohio was a good viewing area! Good luck with the Eclipse viewing!
The pharmacies had them here but they sold out by Friday. So too the libraries. Phil burned his retinas looking at the one in 1970 so I will probably not take a chance. Plus I don’t have the glasses. Although Jerry’s idea of putting a dinner plate with water outside and looking into that is tempting.
Patti, all the the local TV stations around here are covering the Eclipse. I sure yours are, too. Just watch it on TV.
Saw the partial/not-quite total eclipse in the Boston suburbs in 1970…haven’t been in the paths too often since.
No Tyler, thank you. (Just out of curiosity, listened to Billy Swan’s “I Can Help” for the first time in decades to see if it was as awful as I recalled, and it remains so.)
Todd, today is a work day for GOOGLE employees so Patrick is busy working on his laptop. I’m not sure we have time to play Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” on today’s blog post. So…you are spared!
Todd, local businesses and hotels are loving the influx of a million eclipse visitors. I’ll be glad when the traffic problems go away.
1970, 2017, and the Oct. annular. We’re in Concan TX for the one today. Weather forecast not promising. My wife is an amateur astronomer par excellance.
Fred, there’s an army of amateur astronomers here in Western NY to witness the Solar Eclipse. I never saw so many telescopes in one place! I’m sure you’re the brightest star in your wife’s galaxy!
The first eclipse I remember was July of 1963 (we’re old). We were at a bungalow colony in northern New Jersey and some adult or other drove us to the movies to see PT-109, the biopic of JFK in WWII. When we came out, we were told not to look up without special glasses. I wish I had kept mine.
Jeff, this is my first (and maybe last) Solar Eclipse. We all have our Eclipse glasses so we’re ready for the event. Only three more hours!
George, I can’t believe they got there at 4 am! Jackie wants to know what time they left Virginia and how long it took them to get there, Wow.
Jeff, tell Jackie it was an 8 hour drive from Charlottesville, Virginia to North Tonawanda. They wanted their kids to sleep during the drive so they waited until it got dark around 8 P.M. and loaded the car and drove all night. Diane, who is a light sleeper, did NOT hear them enter our house. I, of course, slept through the whole thing.
Not looking good. On TV, they had Robin Roberts and some other goobers at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, and it was totally clear. But in Niagara Falls, it was totally cloudy and they couldn’t see dick until the last minute, when they seemed to get a narrow band. I hope you were luckier, George. We have sun and clouds but since the sun is not being covered…
Jeff, it was 50/50. The first part of the eclipse was cloudy, but just after Totality, the clouds cleared and we were able to see the eclipse clearly.
Hope you all enjoy the fantastic “show” of the eclipse!
I saw a total eclipse in 1999 in Hungary, sitting on an extra bench which my favourit restaurant had put outside for its guests after lunch on the lawn overlooking Lake Balaton.
When the moon eclipsed the sun nature got really quiet, the birds stopped etc …
But then afer a minute or so the mosquitos started visiting us – the only sound we could hear.
Unbelievable and wonderful, showing us our unimportance.
A bit OT:
Austria and Romania were also on the eclipse’s path and a Romanian friend brought me the specal edition of their 2000 Lei banknote which has the eclipse’s path as a decoration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_thousand_lei
I still have that in my purse after almost 25 years and like to show it.
Btw the banknote is plastic, not paper and is still nice to look at.
Wolf, my son Patrick is thinking about the 2025 eclipse in Spain as a possible destination.
Baltimore was in the 85-90% range and nice and clear. I didn’t have glasses, or bother to make a pinhole viewer, but I did enjoy looking at the spaces between leaves in tree shadows on the ground, and how every space was crescent-shaped. I also fanned my fingers out and placed one hand over the other, so the shadow had little “boxes” that were also crescent-shaped. Not a big dramatic event, but cool in its way.
Jeff, glad you enjoyed the eclipse. Some of the million people here who saw it told reporters it was a “mystical experience.”
Had a good view here in SE Michigan. No clouds for a change. Got glasses from the library.
Steve, our view wasn’t ideal, but we saw enough of the eclipse to be impressed!