Total Solar Eclipse April 8, 2024 weather prospects

[Elaine Spencer]

A couple of days ago I managed to book a reasonably priced hotel room for Sunday and Monday nights in a SW Illinois town about 30-40 miles outside the path of totality. Based on our experience from last time we should have no major traffic issues as long as we stick to back roads and avoid interstates. We can reach the path of totality in under an hour from the place we are staying and a 90 minute or 2 hour drive would get us on or near the centerline. Fingers crossed that the weather holds out....

 

[Ben Holcomb]

Bell County Texas (Temple/Belton along 35 between DFW and Austin) has declared a state of emergency for April 8th as they're expecting almost half a million extra people in their county during the eclipse.

Bell County is expecting the influx of eclipse viewers in the area to cause traffic congestion, shortages of food and fuel and cellular network congestion, according to the release.

MSN

 

[Peter MacDonald]

If I stay at home in London, Ontario, I'll see a 99.7% partial eclipse, but if I drive 20 minutes south I'll be in the path of totality. I think this is an easy call to make. The only problem is this is early April and that usually means cloud cover and rain in this region.

Fingers crossed we get a break of good weather.

 

[Dan Robinson]

Getting down to the final planning stage. Preparing to book a hotel room in Shreveport, Louisiana on the 7th and 8th for our southern alternate location in northeast Texas. Between that hotel and home, we should be covered for most of the Texas-Arkansas-Missouri sections. We have multiple family lodging options in the less-likely northeast contingency scenarios from Indiana through Ohio. As with last time, we will be packing enough food for a worst-case scenario of apocalyptic traffic jams, but based on 2017, I don't expect those to be much of an issue. While none of our lodging spots are in the actual path of totality, in most any scenario, we'll have less than a 5 hour drive to get to them from any point on the centerline, prepared for that time to double or triple in worst-case traffic. There's not much more to do now until we get to within range of reliable cloud forecasts (a few days prior).

Looking around at hotel bookings, there are still quite a few rooms available in the totality path for the 7th and 8th. The low-end hotels (Motel 6 and Super 8 for example) appear to not be raising rates, while the better hotels are double or triple the usual rates.

Just outside of the path, the options are plentiful with rates appearing pretty much normal. That seems to be the way to go if you're looking for alternate locations. Based on 2017, getting from just outside the path to the centerline in the morning should be easily doable in most areas that have plenty of roads. I would only be worried about river crossings and other barriers that will bottleneck everyone onto less than 3 road options.

 

[Dan Robinson]

One of the things I've been doing lately is occasional mental exercises of what the plan would be if today's cloud configuration per visible satellite is what we'd have on eclipse day. Today's would be pretty bad! (Time sensitive, 3PM CDT Thursday): COD NEXLAB: Satellite and Radar

The only option in that scenario is New York. I'm not sure if it would even be possible to get up there from here due to the traffic. That's a situation not seen with 2017, having the entire eclipse path clouded except for in one border state.

I'm beginning to realize that we need to mentally prepare ourselves for the possibility of missing this altogether due to clouds. I guess a clouded totality will be better than nothing.

 

[Randy Jennings]

The Fort Worth NWS WFO has published an eclipse page. It includes the path of totality, timing, and cloud climatology for that date in the DFW area (spoiler alert: during the first half of April, the early afternoon frequently has clouds in DFW).

Total Solar Eclipse 2024

 

[Randy Jennings]

An interesting story on how animals react to total eclipse: https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/13/world/eclipse-zoo-animal-behavior-nasa-soundscapes-scn/index.html

Researchers plan to be at zoos in the path during the April eclipse. Researchers studied 17 species during the 2017 event and found behavioral responses to the eclipse in approximately 75% of the zoo animals observed, with the majority either displaying evening activities or behaviors that signal anxiety. Researchers have made additional observations of specific animals’ reactions over the years during solar eclipse events, including studies of captive baboons that increased grooming behaviors, brown pelicans that began to roost, colonial orb-weaver spiders that took down their webs and certain amphibians that became more vocal.

There also is a website link where you can help with research during the eclipse.

 

[Elaine Spencer]

We have had to make a change in our eclipse plans. After my last post, we took in a very pregnant stray cat (long story). She had her kittens a week ago (on March 13). We intend to keep her and at least 2 of her 4 kittens permanently. She's a real sweetie and her kittens are doing great.

Anyhoo... we don't want to leave her and the kittens alone in our house for 2 whole days so we've decided to cancel the motel room and just drive down to the path early that morning, probably around 6-7 a.m., get where we need to be by 11:00, and try to be home by 6-7 p.m. We're hoping the entire trip will be 12 hours or less and that if we make sure mama kitty has access to her food, water and litter box for that time, she and the kittens will be OK. The kittens will be just short of 4 weeks old by that time. Mama and kittens are camped out in our basement and don't go outside, so I don't know if the eclipse (it will only be partial in our area) will freak them out at all. Mama cat now only comes upstairs a few times a day to use the litter box and get some food and water, otherwise she keeps to herself with the kittens.

My question is, for those of you who have storm chased and have pets: is 12 hours too long to leave them alone? Do we need to have someone check on them, or if we can't find anyone to do that, should one of us stay behind to mind mama and kittens (I would be willing to do that, although I would miss totality at least I have gotten to see it once).

 

[Mark Egan]

We have had to make a change in our eclipse plans. After my last post, we took in a very pregnant stray cat (long story). She had her kittens a week ago (on March 13). We intend to keep her and at least 2 of her 4 kittens permanently. She's a real sweetie and her kittens are doing great.

Anyhoo... we don't want to leave her and the kittens alone in our house for 2 whole days so we've decided to cancel the motel room and just drive down to the path early that morning, probably around 6-7 a.m., get where we need to be by 11:00, and try to be home by 6-7 p.m. We're hoping the entire trip will be 12 hours or less and that if we make sure mama kitty has access to her food, water and litter box for that time, she and the kittens will be OK. The kittens will be just short of 4 weeks old by that time. Mama and kittens are camped out in our basement and don't go outside, so I don't know if the eclipse (it will only be partial in our area) will freak them out at all. Mama cat now only comes upstairs a few times a day to use the litter box and get some food and water, otherwise she keeps to herself with the kittens.

My question is, for those of you who have storm chased and have pets: is 12 hours too long to leave them alone? Do we need to have someone check on them, or if we can't find anyone to do that, should one of us stay behind to mind mama and kittens (I would be willing to do that, although I would miss totality at least I have gotten to see it once).

Elaine:

How far outside of the path do you live?

If you do want to make it a day trip, I have some tips on my eclipse blog for that:

Making it a day trip: tips for those who live close to totality

Hello, everyone! Hope all is well as we look forward to a new year. There are many people who live in areas that aren’t too far outside of t...

eclipse482024.blogspot.com

The key things are:

Do not watch from an area that has very large crowds, including any major eclipse gatherings, major towns or cities in the eclipse path, and smaller towns that have been overrun by eclipse tourists.

In fact, try to stay ahead of those areas, so you’re not going through them on the way back.

Try to watch from as close to your car as possible, and leave within 10 minutes of totality ending- so that you can stay ahead of the crowds coming from those more popular areas.

 

[Elaine Spencer]

How far outside of the path do you live?

About 120 miles from the edge of the path and about 170 miles from the center line. In 2017 we went to Steeleville IL to see the eclipse and we would like to go back there again, but we would not HAVE to go that far south to see totality this time. I figure if we get anywhere south or east of Carlyle Lake we should be fine, of course the farther south we go the longer totality we will see.

Under normal conditions, using mostly interstate highways, it would take us 2.5-3 hours to get to Steeleville, and maybe 2 hours to get to the northern edge of the path. If we stick to back roads, we should probably plan on at least 4 hours.

We do NOT want to go to any big eclipse event or to any town/city that is advertising a large gathering. Last time around, we just randomly stopped in Steeleville at the town library and there was not anything big going on, just the library staff and maybe half a dozen other people who'd stopped by. The local high school was next door and the students all came out to watch the eclipse.

 

[Ben Holcomb]

If todays 12Z GFS at 384hr verifies, yall aint seeing much of anything.

 

[Todd Lemery]

April 8th is in range of GFS.

 

[Dan Robinson]

I think it's a safe bet that some close variant of the above is what we'll be dealing with. Climo certainly supports it. This isn't going to be an easy one unfortunately, and the prospect of everything (or at least a big part of the path) being clouded is fairly high. I think it's just something one needs to come to peace with sooner than later. At this point I'm just *expecting* major cloud issues and will be pleasantly surprised if we're able to get to a clear spot somewhere without significant complication.

 

[Jeff Duda]

It's wayyyyyyy too far out for any individual deterministic model run to have any reasonable confidence in cloud cover so far!

C'mon, guys! I thought you knew better than to take 300+-hr forecasts for specific features like regional cloud cover seriously!

We probably won't be able to start having confidence in any cloud cover forecasts until we're within 200 hours (basically, 31 March-1 April). Until then, things could go either way.

Here: pick (read, wishcast) your poison!

 

[JamesCaruso]

I’m not going to worry about it until I’m out there. I have hotel options from Arkansas to Austin. I’ll base in Dallas and make the decision on location the day before, or (if it’s really uncertain) the morning of. I’m sure I won’t be able to resist looking at the synoptic pattern before then, looking in particular for significant storm systems. But other than that, there no point in agonizing over it. It’s not like a storm chasing vacation with a go / no-go decision. This is a singular event on an exact day and time. I already know I’ll be there, and there’s no sense worrying about it a week ahead of time. The only thing I will do is manage my family’s expectations. After seeing the 2017 eclipse, they may think it’s always easily possible to see it

 

[Brian McWatters]

Although the eclipse is two weeks away, the Climate Prediction Center's precip outlook for that week looks favorable:

 

[Ryan Walsh]

Knew I should've moved to Cleveland last year.

 

[Dan Robinson]

Point being that an August 2017 scenario with mostly clear skies coast to coast is very unlikely this time, and what models show even this far out is consistent with climatology for this time of year. Large portions of the path being clouded is to be expected this time, and I’m going into it with a mindset to be ready for some major challenges or in a worst case, just having to accept a cloudy view. Another way to put it is I’ll worry about the things I can control and not worry about what I can’t.

It does have me wondering how feasible it would be to book a jetliner flight at this point! I need to look into that…

 

[Ben Holcomb]

Delta has a couple DFW-DTW flights specifically for the eclipse. Not sure if they have any seats, but worth checking into.

 

[Mark Egan]

Delta has a couple DFW-DTW flights specifically for the eclipse. Not sure if they have any seats, but worth checking into.

Most important thing to note about these flights is that since the sun is rather high in the sky, during the eclipse, the totality is unlikely to be seen outside the aircraft window, unless the plane is banked by about 15-20°. Even then, the viewing positioning is likely to be uncomfortable (crouched on the aircraft floor)

Of course, there are the other standard disclaimers of the flight may not leave on time the flight may be outside of the totality path, etc.

It may be sold out, but anyone with an extra $9750 lying around can possibly book this flight, which is going into the Totality zone using a Cessna Citation X:

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umbracept.files.wordpress.com

The Citation X has sloped windows, so the eclipse would be seen in comfort even with the high sun angle.

The person putting this flight together has put together several successful eclipse chases in private aircraft.

 

[Ben Holcomb]

Eclipse viewing at 30,000 feet: Delta to offer path-of-totality flight

Fliers can catch the April 8 total solar eclipse in-air from DL 1218, Austin-Detroit.

news.delta.com

 

[Todd Lemery]

Interesting that pivotal weather has included the eclipse path along with the GFS cloud cover map.

 

[JamesCaruso]

Most important thing to note about these flights is that since the sun is rather high in the sky, during the eclipse, the totality is unlikely to be seen outside the aircraft window, unless the plane is banked by about 15-20°. Even then, the viewing positioning is likely to be uncomfortable (crouched on the aircraft floor)

Of course, there are the other standard disclaimers of the flight may not leave on time the flight may be outside of the totality path, etc.

It may be sold out, but anyone with an extra $9750 lying around can possibly book this flight, which is going into the Totality zone using a Cessna Citation X:

Loading…

umbracept.files.wordpress.com

The Citation X has sloped windows, so the eclipse would be seen in comfort even with the high sun angle.

The person putting this flight together has put together several successful eclipse chases in private aircraft.

Hard to imagine how any “eclipse flight” is viable, not only due to the factors that Ben mentioned, but what about the side of the plane you have seats on?!? Can’t have everyone shifting over to the same side of the aircraft during flight!!!

 

[JamesCaruso]

Interesting that pivotal weather has included the eclipse path along with the GFS cloud cover map.

Nice! I don’t think they did that in 2017. Looking good in TX! But I’m not even going to start looking at anything until Monday 4/1 at the earliest!

 

[Dan Robinson]

Both the Euro and GFS are getting interesting with some agreement/consistency on a trough ejection in the Plains/Midwest right around the eclipse date. The GEFS ensemble mean also shows general western troughing during that time. The faster Euro looks good with clear skies behind the front, but that general pattern will be a nail-biter.