2024 Total solar Eclipse

[Fummins]

I saw nothing where I was.

[Mark]

I saw nothing where I was.

I had enough of a break in the clouds to witness it, but it wasn't a total eclipse where I live. It was still cool, & it did become darker outside.

I told my driving students last night that I would have scheduled a fire drill at the high school for them to witness it. Most of them never got a chance to see any part of it. I thought the school might accommodate something for it, but I was wrong.

At one time I was the assistant principal of the high school for a couple years, & I could have pulled something like that off without getting into trouble. Technically, fire drills should be practiced once a month anyways.

I did a couple years of high school assistant principal right in the middle of my middle school science teaching career. I did it with the option of returning to my former teaching position after a year or two. They were in a bind at the time, & I was just finishing up my degree in school administration. Instead of trying to teach full time & pull off a principal practicum experience, I just did the job instead. I didn't like being the "bad cop" those two school years, & I chose to return to teaching/coaching. I don't regret the break, & it made me appreciate what I was doing more the second half of my career.

[dspace9]

I'm pretty close to the "path to totality", so I witnessed quite a bit of the eclipse. This is the photo I took with the eclipse glasses in front of my camera lens. The sun looks like a crescent:



It was a weird experience for sure, everything went darker, but it was less exciting than the hype they were making it out to be. Like not in a Hollywood movie-level of excitement. Just nature doing its thing.

I saw this mime the other day on facebook and it really cracked me up.

[MetroMPG]

But what an amazing experience - to see a gray ring in the afternoon sky with streetlights on all around and two planets visible despite the high altitude, wispy cloud cover. It makes me want to travel to experience the next total eclipse, wherever it lands.

Simply amazing.

It was really great!

It was clouding over here, so we had a look at the satellite images, estimated the speed of the cloud front, so decided to race the moon down the highway towards blue skies. We made it!

2 things that surprised me most:

1) I couldn't believe how LIGHT it stayed out when only the tiniest sliver of the sun was left uncovered.

2) So I guess I shouldn't be surprised at how suddenly it got dark once the moon finally completely blocked the sun.

I also saw Jupiter during totality - first time I've seen it during daylight hours. (Did you know you can see Venus during broad daylight at certain points in its orbit? I learned that a few years ago and have done day time sightings many times.)

Only 20 years to the next one in North America! My eyes will probably be shot by then. I'll listen to the play by play

[MetroMPG]

Oh - forgot to say:

There was the BIGGEST traffic jam I've seen on the 401 after the eclipse - 10's of thousands of people heading back up to Ottawa all at once. ~20 km long stop & crawl for a couple of hours. Craziness. *

* That's normal in most big cities, unheard of around here in the boonies.

[Eggman]

Oh - forgot to say:

There was the BIGGEST traffic jam I've seen on the 401 after the eclipse - 10's of thousands of people heading back up to Ottawa all at once. ~20 km long stop & crawl for a couple of hours. Craziness. *

* That's normal in most big cities, unheard of around here in the boonies.

A Tesla Supercharger was inundated with EVs trying to charge up for the trip home after the eclipse.

Newsweek: Hundreds of Tesla Owners Flood Charging Station

[Wallythacker]

Oh - forgot to say:

There was the BIGGEST traffic jam I've seen on the 401 after the eclipse - 10's of thousands of people heading back up to Ottawa all at once. ~20 km long stop & crawl for a couple of hours. Craziness. *

* That's normal in most big cities, unheard of around here in the boonies.

Wow! Here in the Falls AFAIK it was quiet and normal. No miles long backlogs I was aware of. I drove around right after the eclipse and did not encounter traffic.

[OrganicFoxes]

Yeah I had to get off the freeway because everyone was looking into the sky and not the road when it was happening.

[MetroMPG]

The highways department had the illuminated signs saying things like:

DO NOT STOP BESIDE HIGHWAY FOR ECLIPSE

I guess they wanted people staring into the sky while doing 120 km/h instead.