Weather Planning for Eclipse Day

https://eclipsophile.com/eclipse-day-weather/

by wallflower • 2 years ago

157 96 2 years ago

dylan60410• 2 years ago

This is my biggest concern for eclipse day. In the past, when ever I spend money to take pictures of the sky, something always goes wrong. Rent a camera with the IR filter removed specific for astro purposes...it rains so much that the state park with very dark skies closes due to flooding. Have a free weekend with no scheduled activities, a new moon on the weekend, and most importantly, blessing from the SO, yup, weather.

This time of year is thunderstorm season, and I'm already concerned about it since I've purchased plenty of solar protection for my gear. I'm just hoping my cunning plan of buying it all last year so far in advance confuses whatever it is that decides when I spend money we get bad visibility. ????

ppierald• 2 years ago

I happened to get invited to friends of my in-laws who own a vacation property on the Oregon coast for the 2017 eclipse. Of course, the Pacific coast is dicey at best, so we were crossing our fingers. When the time came, the stars lined up and we had that magical moment, except right at that moment, the waste truck came through picking up the bins. If you have the opportunity, GO. The worst case is you don't see it. The best case is one of the most memorable experiences of your life.

dylan60410• 2 years ago

Luckily, I don't have to go. It's coming to me. It was even kind enough to respond to my RSVP.

pixl97• 2 years ago

If the 8th is anything like today then 50% of the eclipse path would be covered by the clouds. You'd have to drive 600+ miles to get out of the overcast.

dylan60410• 2 years ago

Thanks for the pick me up with that one!

mangamadaiyan• 2 years ago

Aha, I see that even astrophotographers are not exempt from the curse of new equipment :) Good on you for buying your equipment well in advance, and may you have clear skies on the day.

JKCalhoun• 2 years ago

Yeah, plan on hitting the road and more or less following the path if the forecast doesn't look good where I am.

In general it looks like the closer you go to Mexico, the better your odds — historically.

Loughla• 2 years ago

Yeah. We have tickets to the event at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, but plan to keep driving southwest or turn back around and go northeast if it's supposed to be cloudy in southern. Drive all night, sleep in a field if we have to.

dylan60410• 2 years ago

That's the great thing about this kind of event. You really don't have to be anywhere special once you're in the path. The side of the road is as good of a point as some field where they're charging money to attend. Just look up (with correct viewing glasses of course).

al_borland• 2 years ago

I ran into clouds at the last eclipse. It was still cool, but I didn’t get to actually see it. I was thinking of going to Texas this time around, but will end up much further north. I’m hoping I get lucky. If not, I’ll be planning some international trips around future eclipses. This is a bucket list thing for me.

I have pretty vivid memories of my first partial solar eclipse from when I was in school, but being in the path of totality was a completely different experience, and about 10,000x better, even without seeing it.

PhyllisEngine• 2 years ago

SpotWx is excellent, use it quite a bit for mountaineering objectives, definitely recommend people check it out for precise data

RheingoldRiver3• 2 years ago

I need to be in a city the eclipse is passing over, for a reason unrelated to the eclipse. I can't get a hotel room that night, and I think I will have to drive out of its path for one night. I don't even care about the eclipse but this is so inconvenient and I'm very frustrated.

mbauman• 2 years ago

Be prepared for day-of eclipse traffic, too!

RheingoldRiver3• 2 years ago

Oh god I didn't even think of that. But surely that would be in the opposite direction from me?

roughly• 2 years ago

I’m sure you’ve heard this from everyone, and I don’t mean to minimize your frustration here, but - if you can find a way to see the eclipse, you really should. It’s a uniquely memorable event.

AnimalMuppet• 2 years ago

I would at least consider grabbing a sleeping bag and sleeping in my car for this.

EMM_3862• 2 years ago

I don't even care about the eclipse but this is so inconvenient and I'm very frustrated.

If you haven't experienced an eclipse in the arc of totality, and that's where you're already going to be, I would strongly suggest (weather and whatever else permitting) that you drive as close to the centerline as you can, and just park the car and stand there for a few minutes.

It is something everyone should experience if they can.

RheingoldRiver3• 2 years ago

Okay, yours and the other the comments here convinced me to figure something out, and I've made arrangements. If all goes well I will see the eclipse on Monday. Thanks for your encouragement!

scd314• 2 years ago

As someone who's paranoid about missing the eclipse due to cloudy weather, I've been working with a few people to launch a high altitude balloon during the eclipse: https://eclipseplus.ca/

We have several cameras on board, including one that points at the sun and one that takes video. It all gets live-streamed to the ground (actually, that's my contribution to the project - the communications system) and sent off to YouTube.

We're launching from New Brunswick, Canada, and we'll be going up to about 30km, or 100k feet. So the clouds definitely won't be an issue for us.

nelblu2• 2 years ago

Awesome! I'm driving myself to Kouchibouguac to experience the totality. Considering that maritimes is always cloudy during this time of the year I'm not expecting much of a "view" but just want to experience the total darkness. Where we live (NS) we are getting about 95% darkness but I figured a couple of hours drive is worth to experience 100%!

scd314• 2 years ago

Absolutely. I've never experienced a total eclipse before but I hear the difference between 95% and 100% is stark; due to the logarithmic nature of the human eye. I'm not even sure if 95% coverage would even be noticeable without eclipse glasses.

I'm from NS myself (Halifax) and have been trying to convince my parents to drive up to NB to see the eclipse. I'll be home for Easter so that'll probably be my last attempt!

xattt2• 2 years ago

The adage I’ve heard is that 90+% eclipses only give you 10% experience of totality.

I’m in Charlottetown, and I’ll be driving to North Cape (as will the rest of the Island). Between worrying about the weather, I’m also concerned that I won’t be able to get to North Cape in the first place.

So far, I managed to beat the solar glasses rush by ordering in January. I’m trying to figure out the timing to get to North Cape early enough to have a spot to park, but not too early that my kids will lose their minds with the waiting.

dylan60410• 2 years ago

How do you keep a camera pointed when attached to a balloon? I've done a similar balloon launch, but very much on the cheap. Our payload had no stabilization, so it just acted as a pendulum under the balloon, and would spin as the torsion of the rope commanded. I've had thoughts after seeing those results, but just never had the opportunity to try it again. Based on the pics on your link, my balloon looked very similar. I'm guessing you'll be using a totally different balloon than those on the landing page.

scd314• 2 years ago

Our payload has no stabilization either, and in past launches we've had quite a bit of rotation and swinging. Here's a video of one of last launch, for reference: https://peertube.scd31.com/w/7CQCYB4BmJzngoZTiMociY

To point the camera we have a lot of clever software and hardware. I didn't have any part in it, so I'll try to explain it as best I can. There's a diagram here, which hopefully will help you to follow along: https://eclipseplus.ca/Project_Details/Payload_Design/

We have a fixed camera mounted above a mirror. The mirror is on a special gimbal, which can be maneuvered using two servos and a bit of math. For coarse aiming, we have an IMU on board which uses the magnetic field of the Earth to figure out its orientation. For fine aiming, we do a bit of image processing to try and center the sun in the field of view of the camera. It's not perfect, but since we're only capturing still images, it's okay if not all the images have the sun in view.

Also of note is the filter, which starts in-place (to protect the optics) and automatically moves out of the way during totality. It also moves back into place afterwards so that we can continue safely taking images after the eclipse.

The balloons on the landing page are accurate! Those pictures are from past launches, which used the same payload (with some changes between each launch)

btbuildem• 2 years ago

I wonder if you could attach multiple lines to a bar/triangle that's fixed under the balloon. This would eliminate the rope twisting/untwisting, but of course nothing stops the balloon itself from rotating.

colechristensen• 2 years ago

That's quite a lot of bandwidth streaming video up to ~100,000 feet. How are you achieving this?

scd314• 2 years ago

I wrote a bit about it here: https://www.scd31.com/posts/real-time-balloon-video

The actual bandwidth is 500kbps, or about 350kbps usable after FEC. I'm encoding video at 640x480, 12FPS. It's almost entirely custom software. I'm using a Gstreamer pipeline to take in the video stream, encode it, and encapsulate it. From there, I packetize it, run it through an LDPC encoder (for error correction), data whitening, and finally send it to an FSK modem to convert it into radio waves. On the ground station I basically do the same thing in reverse.

At 1W transmission, I've gotten video over 140km from a balloon to the ground. Most of that distance is horizontal - the winds tend to blow the balloon quite far. The math says the system should be good to at least 250km.

ghaff3• 2 years ago

A bunch of us are going to Maine. We consider it a house party with actually seeing the eclipse as a bonus.

ssocolow• 2 years ago

Where in Maine? It passes over Katahdin, a mountain I love to climb, but it would be too much of a hassle for me to see it there.

ghaff3• 2 years ago

The Forks. Things are pretty sparse up in that area of Maine though at that time of year.

SamBam2• 2 years ago

Me too, but the party is likely the only thing we'll get, with the weather.

Ah well, there's always the next one in... 2045.

ghaff3• 2 years ago

Yeah. We're not really planning on seeing anything other than it getting dark.

fghorow• 2 years ago

I found this site a few weeks back. It was built for generic astronomical clear-sky use in the US and Canada (at least) but it has this page[1] for weather along the eclipse track.

[1]https://www.cleardarksky.com/ec/2024-04-08_eclipse_map.html

Tepix• 2 years ago

Related problem: How do i convince someone that it's worth traveling 30 hours (by boat) to be in the path of totality? Ideally i need something convincing in German. Thanks for your help!

cldellow2• 2 years ago

Honestly, you'd have a hard time convincing me that it was worth it unless it was part of some other trip.

If you're willing to travel 30 hours for a total solar eclipse, wait a few years and travel 10-20 hours instead.

They're not _that_ rare.

dylan60410• 2 years ago

Such a procrastinator's response. Who knows where someone might be in their life in a few years, physically, medically, financially, whatevs. You might put off this to wait for something closer, but then the day of it's cloudy or something. If you have the chance to do it today, go for it. Plus, the more times the merrier.

However, if it's not your thing, then it's not your thing. Nothing anyone says will really change that. But discouraging someone else is kind of an asshat move

awongh• 2 years ago

From what I can figure out this is the longest one that: is on land. In/on a first world country (with a good level of logistical infrastructure) for the next 30-50 years.

There are other ones but the path of totality doesn’t pass completely on land or if it does it passes through Libya or something.

reference: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_eclipses_in_th...

orionsbelt• 2 years ago

Does anyone have a recommendation for the easiest way to see the eclipse if I haven’t started planning until now, from California? Flights to Mezatlan are basically full so it would involve a bunch of connections. Optimizing for being able to fly Saturday, and back Monday, with minimal hassle (eg connections or long drives) and hopefully a city that has more than a few seconds of totality. Thanks in advance for any tips

et-al• 2 years ago

There's plenty of cities in the US where you can experience totality. The bottleneck will probably be renting a car from the airport.

1. Check the Clear Sky Charts map fghorow shared (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39807463)

2. Look up flights to major cities in the path

3. Check rental car availability

tzs2• 2 years ago

There are major cities where the airport is well into the path of totality, so you could skip #3 and watch from the airport.

SamBam2• 2 years ago

How bad do you want to see it?

LA to Dallas by car is about 20 hours. You could do that in two or three days...

zamalek2• 2 years ago

Having seem 5 at this point (mostly pure luck), I would spend 20 hours driving to see one. I'm doing 8 and at least I'll get a neat camping trip out of it if the weather decides to be a nuisance.

ssl-36• 2 years ago

Find a number of good spots on the map that seem likely to have clear weather, take good notes on each one of them, and get your plane tickets and other things in order as late as you dare in case the weather might change?

A fellow HN person put this map together, which I've found to be particularly useful: https://celestialprogramming.com/apps/SolarEclipseViewer/vie...

(My job is much easier, here in Ohio, but I've already got a few hours invested in surveying and weighing different viewing locations.)

dohello1• 2 years ago

My biggest worry is dropping a bunch of money on a plane ticket just for the weather to ruin it!

devilbunny• 2 years ago

There were still seats on a Dallas-to-Cleveland flight out of DFW at 1:14 pm that day as of a few days ago. Probably no window seats, but the entire flight is in the path of totality and if you leave on time, you should be at 10k feet or above when it happens. Unless some seriously big weather intrudes, you will be above the clouds. American Airlines.

willidiots• 2 years ago

If you're new to this: from experience during past eclipses, make sure you're in the area of totality. Our family was on the edge of that area for the last one and thought it'd be enough - it wasn't, as we sadly learned sitting in a slightly dim parking lot. You need to be right under the center of it to get the full experience.

margalabargala• 2 years ago

Just want to emphasize this. The difference between near-totality and totality is immense.

A partial eclipse is a crescent sun, similar to how our moon is a crescent much of the time. The crescent is shaped mildly differently due to the occlusion, but really after that novelty is gone, it's just daytime with a crescent sun.

A sky with a total solar eclipse is a new, third kind of sky that is neither like day or night. It's as different from those as they are from one another, and what you will feel seeing it will be as though you have lived your whole life during the nighgband are seeing a night sky with the milky way for the first time. If you have the opportunity, don't miss it.

The only thing this comic gets wrong is neglecting to mention the Y axis is a log scale. https://xkcd.com/1880/

ssl-36• 2 years ago

Do you mean "in the path of totality" or "right under the center line?"

I live "in the path" and I've got friends nearby with rural spots to watch from.

Or: I can take a bit of a drive and find a spot to hang out pretty much directly under the center line, but they will be crowded and there isn't much of a practical way to avoid that.

The difference, according to maps, seems to be just a few seconds of total occlusion. Or is there more to it than that?

mikeytown2• 2 years ago

Aim for 80% inside the path. The couple extra seconds you'll gain from being dead center is usually not worth the hassle. clouds is your biggest enemy day of.

Stratoscope5• 2 years ago

Totality is totality, whether you are in the direct center of the path or closer to the edge.

The difference is how long you will experience totality.

dfee• 2 years ago

What’s the best way to find a location in the center of totality and also ideal weather conditions.

As for location, I’m finding the NASA map hard to use: https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/skywatching/eclipses/n...

For the weather, I realize that clouds may pop up. And, I’m not sure how much I can rely of local / regional weather to tell me where, within a 4-5 hour radius, I should drive for best conditions.

Lining these two up (as well as handling traffic), will be difficult I imagine. For what it’s worth, I’ll be in Austin.

—

From another comment: https://www.cleardarksky.com/ec/2024-04-08_eclipse_map.html

riwsky• 2 years ago

Eclipse day? Beware the IDEs of March.

Crespyl• 2 years ago

Fortunately this one happens to be in April.

neilv• 2 years ago

How are people sourcing and testing their eclipse glasses?

Amazon seems full of their usual random-brand-name search spamming.

I see this, but don't know how many people are informed by it: https://eclipse.aas.org/eye-safety/how-to-tell-if-viewers-ar...

gs17• 2 years ago

I got the ones B&H was selling and they're real (it also came with filters for phones and an app which I find suspicious). Amazon is way too risky for something like this when there's known fakes going around.

Stratoscope5• 2 years ago

If you will be in the path of totality, you don't need eclipse glasses.

Just wear your regular sunglasses, and don't look at the Sun during the partial phases.

Bring a white sheet to put on the ground, and a large piece of paper with pinholes stuck into it. With your sunglasses on, look away from the Sun and project it through the pinholes onto the sheet.

Keep watching as totality approaches, and something magical may happen: ripples of light and dark on your sheet, as if you were at the bottom of a stream or river.

Then look up and you may see the Moon's shadow approaching at high speed!

When the shadow overtakes you, turn around and make sure there are no little specks of light around the edge of the Sun. (These are called the diamond ring and Baily's beads.) A quick glance won't hurt you, just keep them out of the center of your vision so you don't have an afterimage.

Then take your sunglasses off and behold the awesome solar corona.

As soon as any of those specks come back, turn back around, sunglasses go on, and maybe head out to beat the crowds!

jader2013• 2 years ago

Or, just order any on the NASA approved list OP linked.

You can buy these direct (for example), at a decent price:

https://medicalkingusa.com/collections/inventory-set

zamalek2• 2 years ago

YOU COULD BECOME BLIND.

DO NOT purchase brand name spam glasses, in fact I would avoid Amazon altogether. NASA has a page of reputable vendors: https://eclipse.aas.org/eye-safety/viewers-filters

I would purchase them now, as mine (Rainbow Symphony) took a few days to ship and arrive.

EMM_3862• 2 years ago

I drove from the northeast down to South Carolina to see the 2017 eclipse in the center of totality.

All I can say is ... if you haven't experienced this in your life, go see it. But you must be in the arc of totality, even 99% isn't going to do it. The closer you get to the centerline, the longer totality lasts.

And it's something else. It gets very dark, very quickly. It gets cold, the stars come out, it feels surreal.

It's awe-inspiring.

jader2013• 2 years ago

The closer you get to the centerline, the longer totality lasts.

The difference is logarithmic, though. And 90% vs. 100% center is only a matter of a few seconds difference.

The difference between being on the far edge vs. 10% inside is much longer, though.

acjohnson55• 2 years ago

I did the same! I convinced my wife that we should put our 2 week old daughter in the car for her first roadtrip, and we made our way very slowly to the Carolinas. We were going to catch it in the mountains, near Boone, NC, but it was cloudy over there, so we frantically made our way into South Carolina. We managed to find clear enough skies just minutes before totality.

mckn1ght• 2 years ago

Drove from New England to southern Illinois and hiked into a park forest right on the line, directly between the points of greatest eclipse and greatest duration. Definitely the wildest natural phenomena I’ve ever witnessed, it literally took my breath away. Hard to imagine topping it without actually riding a rocket into space.

euroderf• 2 years ago

Tangentially related... My pet theory is that it was total eclipses that motivated ancient civilizations' evident fascination with astronomy and (by extension!) mathematics.

jccalhoun• 2 years ago

I live in the path of totality and the city is planning on it being chaos. There are billboards up. Schools are closed for the day. I'm sure every hotel room is booked. And yet, I mentioned it in class the other day and that was the first time one of my students - in college - had heard of it.

criddell• 2 years ago

Travis County (Austin, TX) has preemptively declared a disaster declaration for eclipse day.

https://www.statesman.com/story/news/local/2024/03/08/solar-...

SirMaster• 2 years ago

Someone told me to find a "pressure bubble" the day of.

As in a region of high atmospheric pressure.

As this would likely mean low or no cloud formation.

Anyone have a good source of live or forecasted pressure maps?

tzs2• 2 years ago

BTW your eclipse adventure doesn't necessarily end when the eclipse does. If you are driving home your navigation apps might try to send you on more adventures.

The main roads and the reasonable alternates might all be slow over a wide area, leading to the apps thinking that various roads that would never normally be suggested would be better.

Here is what a friend told my happened when he was trying to get from the middle or Oregon to the Bay Area after the 2017 eclipse:

Google kept sending us onto logging roads: we bailed on the first when we were told to turn onto a non-existent road; we bailed on the second when a van came out and told us that ~5 cars were stuck axle-deep in mud; we bailed on the third when we got to a sign informing us that we were about to enter an off-road-vehicle trail.

el_nahual• 2 years ago

I drove down to Carbondale, IL last eclipse from Chicago, usually a 5 hour drive. It took 8. Not too bad! Pulled over in some country rode with a patch of clear sky. It doesn't really matter where you are: the show is up there.

The moment the eclipse ended we drove back to the interstate, which minutes prior had been empty.

It was bumper-to-bumper. Like something out of a cartoon.

The drive back to Chicago took 14 hours. I decided to follow Waze, which took me (and an endless line of cars with the same idea) through a one-lane dirt road through a bunch of farms.

The people who lived there took lawn chairs out and sat down to drink beers and watch the strange procession.

Stopped for lunch at a crossroads Panda Express. It was bedlam. Thousands of people all looking to eat something in rest stop that usually feeds dozens. The crew of pimply highschoolers resorted to slapping spoonfuls of random faux Chinese food into Styrofoam containers and giving it out for free. "Just take it!"

The only scary part was being caught by one of those Midwestern thunderstorms about two hour out from Chicago--at 2am, after diving for about 18 hours straight, sticking my hand out of the window to wet it before slapping myself on the face to stay awake (no way to pull over--not when visibility is ~zero).

Adventure indeed!

Weather Planning for Eclipse Day

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