2024 Solar Eclipse Superthread

[Chris 2,162]

4 hours ago, Hal said:

I haven’t been looking at comments but can only imagine … shall i sacrifice one of the neighbors chickens ?! 😆 

I would have happily beheaded one of the hens if it brought the sun out. What a disappointment. (Wait, I was reminded by a young lady to stay positive.) It got dark, it got colder… I guess that’s something. (?)

I will say, I enjoyed seeing the coverage in the news as the moon made its way between us and the sun. It was nice to see so many people sharing a positive moment, even if we didn’t get to experience it ourselves. 

[Hal 341]

I stayed as positive as possible No chicken sacrifice either . Did however, on going out just for giggles , I was treated to all the birds making pre evening song four to five hours earlier than usual … oh yeah and a white headed Robin ( no joke ) and a group of five geese that missed their usual route to the pond on top of the hill and did an abrupt 45 degree , so that was all the weird … I mean other thant the usual weird here in Baldwin ! 

[Chris 2,162]

We also took note of the evening songs from the birds, and how the domestic critters were reacting to the dimming light. 

The goats were really off the wall yestersay and the day before, very vocal and "needy."  I wonder if the lunar path or proximity had something to do with that?

[Chris 2,162]

Yesterday reminded me of the last in this series of Peanuts comics from 1963:

[Chris 2,162]

According to this article, it appears 81 was a real treat to drive yesterday. 

[MsKreed 1,182]

20A around Warsaw was steady, but not too bad Sunday when I drove in. 

 

But this morning was a shi-ite show.

Dozens of troopers that must have been deployed to Buffalo/Niagara paraded back, along with the tourists.  I left there about 11:30 after the traffic stream on 20A slowed. But hit it serious bumper-to-bumper at Mt Morris around Letchworth.  Then 390 and 86 were still heavy for midday on a Tuesday. 

 

We had dense cloud cover that obscured the corona, but 4 solid minutes of eerie dark. It was surprising that at 3:19 it was "dull" like a huge hail storm was fixing to hit, then really dark.  And it happened very suddenly.

How dark did this area get? I'm wondering if 98% only got to the "eerie gloom" that preceded the full dark totality I saw?

The clouds cleared out a lot and by 4pm, we could see the waning partial clearly with glasses, but no one could get the silhouette to show up on a camera. 

 

(I took a short video on my phone panning the horizon during the totality.  It isn't as dramatic as the "live" view was, but I will see if I can post it here from my phone.)

[MsKreed 1,182]

Well that sucks.  It only allowed the shorter (3 sec) video. The 36 second one said file too large. 

[MsKreed 1,182]

[MsKreed 1,182]

OK...I was able to compress it and it worked

[Chris 2,162]

2 hours ago, MsKreed said:

How dark did this area get? I'm wondering if 98% only got to the "eerie gloom" that preceded the full dark totality I saw?

I took a picture but my phone camera tends to make it look lighter than it really was. Interestingly it lightens the pic after I open it, but here’s the dark I managed to catch:

That’s at 3:20. It was darker than that though. Certainly not as dark as where you were though!!

[MsKreed 1,182]

On 4/1/2024 at 10:15 AM, TTL News said:

Quote

 

99 percent of the time, 99 percent is just about as good as 100 percent.

But when it comes to a solar eclipse, the math doesn't work that way.

“Going to an eclipse but not going into totality is like driving 99% of the way to Disneyland, looking at your kids in the back seat, and then turning around and driving home because it is not the experience,” says Deb Ross, chair of Rochester’s eclipse task force.

She picked up that analogy at the national eclipse meeting we both attended last fall in San Antonio.

Remember the Alamo, because it's one of the places where that 99 percent will make a huge difference come April 8th.

 

Read the rest here.

So, looks like this lady was correct....the last 1% was a significant change after all. Perhaps we sometimes underestimate how much light the sun put out if 1% provides that much illumination. LOL

 

[Chris 2,162]

It’s crazy to think about!

I was quite impressed by the solar flares visible on the tv footage. The I see that in real life would have been amazing.

[MsKreed 1,182]

And, as if to balance the Margy Taylor's guano loco on the far right......e have The View's Sunny Hostin saying the eclipse, earthquakes and the life cycle of cicadas are due to Climate Change.