April 8, 2024

A total solar eclipse is going to sweep across America from Texas through Newfoundland.  I should have been planning this early this year.  The cloud forecasts for the most favorable part of the path is Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas in declining order and it gets worse the farther northeast you follow the path.  Places like Waco are like 36% cloudy in April.  Making hotel and airline reservations for a strong possibility of seeing nothing are discouraging.  The room rates are already reaching silly enough that camping starts to make sense.  Of course that also means planning a 1600 mile drive to get around the already insane airfares.  

I cannot believe that I took my family to England for the 1999 eclipse.  I made careful use of NASA weather forecast data to pick a spot where the clouds parted Cecil B. deMille like for the eclipse.  Admittedly, we went to England to see other things too.