On the 8th of April 2024 North America was treated to one of the most spectacular astronomical events as a total eclipse of the Sun raced across Mexico, 13 of the United States along with the Maritime Provinces of Canada. I started my planning for the eclipse last year and decided that Texas had the best chance of good weather in April. When it comes to eclipses it’s all about the weather and getting your arrangements made early!
The town in Texas I choose is known as Greenville, just about 50 kilometers to the east of Dallas which was scheduled to see four minutes and five seconds of totality, weather permitting. Anyway, by last Thanksgiving I had my flight planned and motel booked for the event. All I needed was clear skies.
Now I saw my first total eclipse in Sweetwater Tennessee back in 2017. Like Sweetwater, Greenville made quite a few preparations for the crowd of people that could be expected to arrive to see the eclipse. See my post of 24 August 2017 for my report on that eclipse. However, whereas Sweetwater had closed off their main street and a small park for the eclipse, Greenville set up for this year’s eclipse in a large Sports Park just outside of the town where there was plenty of room for parking and a nice big area for food and other vendors to set up. The town even hired a DJ to provide music in the hours before the eclipse and went to the trouble of erecting about 30 picnic tables. Everything was ready we just needed good weather.
The day before the eclipse was mostly sunny as I did some fossil hunting at the Ladonia Fossil Park along the Sulfur River and when 1PM arrived I remember thinking, “if only tomorrow at this time is this clear!” It wasn’t. The morning of the eclipse dawned with a thick layer of clouds blanketing the sky and we anxiously checked the weather forecasts to see if there was any hope of the sky clearing for the time of totality at 1:42 PM. According to the forecasts there was hope of some clearing by noon, partly sunny to mostly sunny depending on which weather report you read.
Anyway we were the very first to arrive at the parking lot at about 8 O’clock so we got the best spot to park in. None of the vendor’s opened until 10 O’clock however so we had two hours to wait. As we waited my sister spotted a couple of Scissor-tailed flycatchers which kept her busy trying to get some good pictures of them while my brother and I just worried about the cloud cover.
By 10 O’clock you could see that the clouds were thinning even though they still covered the sky. By 11 there were a few small breaks and around 11:30 the Sun finally started appearing in and out of the clouds so that we could actually use the eclipse glasses and the eclipse binoculars I bought.
The partial eclipse started at just about noon and with the thin wispy clouds you often didn’t need the eclipse glasses because the clouds cut out just enough light so it didn’t hurt your eyes. As we watched the sky cleared more and more although the clouds never completely dissipated.
When totality came at 1:42 PM there were still a few thin clouds that passed in front some of the time but despite them we were able to see the entire four minutes and five seconds of totality. In fact the light of the corona passing though the clouds made the eclipse look quite spectacular, although it probably made any real scientific measurements impossible. By the way the skies around the eclipse also cleared enough for me to see both the planet Venus and, for a few seconds Jupiter.
Since our motel was only a few kilometers away we stayed after totality and watched most of the partial eclipse that followed. Most of the crowd left immediately however, as did the vendors so around 2:30 we also packed up our stuff and headed back to our motel. Even as we were leaving the skies were beginning to darken again and that night around 8:30 a severe thunderstorm with heavy hail rained down as we relaxed in our room.
So I feel I got lucky, I got to see my second eclipse despite some bad weather. With two total eclipses along with a transit of Venus and a transit of Mercury the two big items remaining in my astronomical bucket list now are the Northern Lights and a really good Occultation by the Moon. If I ever see either of them I’ll be sure to let you know!