cubinator

Alright, I am settled right next to the centerline, skies are clear and should hold!

Out from under that cloud deck but still trying to ensure it doesn't catch us.

Fighting clouds in southern Arkansas.

I predicted deceptively blue skies in the morning for Dallas. Those clouds will come up from the south... I'm heading NE for the edge of Arkansas, where hopefully only some thin cirrus clouds will be.

I'm honestly really looking forward to not caring in the slightest what the next day's weather is like. But first, 1. Sleep 2. Road trip 3. Eclipse

I'm converging on roughly the same area for my destination, coming in from the south. Somewhere around where the centerline crosses the Oklahoma-Arkansas border, only one of the models on Windy really says the clouds will get up into OK from Texas so anything farther than that should hopefully just be greater assurance. Various other models seem to be showing the clouds ending somewhere between Dallas and the Texas border. Best of luck to everyone chasing tomorrow, clear skies and enjoy the spectacle!

Yeah, seems like there'll be only one time we'll know for sure...My guess is the high clouds will be thin, so the big danger is probably that moisture coming up from the Gulf, figuring out where that stops/how far it will get by totality

It's cheaper than actually flying to the Moon!

That little corner where the centerline clips Oklahoma seems to be promising right now on the European and Canadian models on cleardarksky.

Currently what I'm seeing suggests the northern Texas clouds are going to be thin and/or broken up tomorrow. I think we have a chance!

Yep. With plans to drive...somewhere on Monday.

Well, I'm off to Texas. We shall see what happens.

The use of a solar eclipse in the same place as the binary sunset in Star Wars is very interesting for a movie coming out at this particular time...I wonder if having seen it in the movie will inspire many people to travel.

Yeah, Texas is sunnier but not by that much. Even in Texas the chance of clouds was over 50%. But what seems to be uncommon is for the entire state to be covered in clouds, rather than some areas cloudy and others sunny.

Here's a Canadian model to...be more hopeful about? https://www.cleardarksky.com/f.php?p=202404054C08406PoageObTX Yeah, this really is more like a storm chase for a lot of us. Probably a bunch of people are going to top it off with an actual storm chase as those will pop up in Texas that evening.

I'm still seeing a bunch of somewhat competing forecasts in Texas...On Windy, the higher-resolution models seem to be more optimistic: https://www.windy.com/-Clouds-clouds?clouds,2024040818,33.843,-92.483,6,m:eBQadwQ And there is currently some wildfire smoke in a few places around Texas - in my experience, this doesn't really inhibit any sort of viewing of the Sun (even H-alpha), just makes it a little more "interesting"

Daily updates here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2024/03/29/cloud-cover-eclipse-forecast-maps-cities/ This site is quite useful for chasing clear skies: https://www.cleardarksky.com/csk/prov/all_charts_map.html And, of course, realtime photos from space: https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/goes/conus_band.php?sat=G16&band=GEOCOLOR&length=12

In the other direction, Port Hope gets about a minute along the coast, and Brighton gets about 2 minutes. Current models suggest potential better chances weather-wise in that direction too.

Keep in mind that the projected paths are leaning toward overestimating the width of the path, as a consequence of uncertainty in the exact size of the Sun: https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/april-8-solar-eclipse-maps-are-wrong-along-the-edges/ 99% is COMPLETELY different from 100%. Make your family aware of this! But if you do stay on the edge of the path, please share your experience! It will be unique from most.

Suffice it to say that it becomes immediately obvious why humans throughout history have perceived the sun as a god.

https://cobs.si/analysis/?comet=484&from_date=2023-12-01+17%3A06&to_date=2024-04-02+17%3A06&observation_type=V&observation_type=C&plot_x_value=1&plot_y_value=1&fit_option=1&observer=&association=&country=&compare_values=filter 12P seems to be staying in the mag. 4 range for the eclipse, unless it explodes or something.

Get in the path. Get as close to the center line as you can. There is no celestial sight in the entire solar system that compares.

Today's weather forecast for Texas is less worrisome than the weekend's, hopefully things continue to trend better. There should at least be clear skies somewhere reachable, which is the case most years on that date.

I was actually looking at the ground when the 2017 totality started, the first I learned about shadow bands was seeing them in person all over the dirt road. The great uproar from the surrounding crowd cued me to look back up at the sky, and there it was.

In 2017 I was in totally clear skies, but since I can recognize Earth's shadow at sunset I was able to spot the Moon's shadow just in the atmosphere. I couldn't quite see it advancing like you describe, but when I looked away for a few moments and looked back it was startlingly closer. Maybe I will get to see that even better this time!