Eclipse Experience

OK, this isn’t necessarily about WXSIM, but I just wanted to report that I am back from a FANTASTIC experience with the total eclipse on Monday!! My wife, and son, and I, and a friend were among relatively few people who managed to get up on 3500 foot Bell Mountain, near Hiawassee, GA, where we had great weather. Regarding weather, I was able to observe some interesting things. First, there were morning clouds in the valley, near Lake Chatuge, as it added moisture to the air, and cold air drainage off the mountains cooled the valley enough. The morning sun burned those off, but what I’d worried about was late morning/early afternoon sun producing thermals and cumulus clouds. My hope had been that the eclipse itself would kill off the thermals and reduce such clouds before the 2 minute and 27 second totality.

Puffy clouds did start to build before first contact at 1:06 PM, but mostly over the long, higher ridges. Bell Mountain was isolated enough not to make its own clouds. Indeed, as it got darker and cooler, the cumulus clouds quit growing and shrunk a little, and we had an unobstructed view of the sun virtually the whole time! I was looking into the distance, maybe 50 miles away to see the umbra. Its appearance, about a minute before totality, was vague but stunning, like a deep brown gloom that rapidly intensified. The lights in the valley came on as the lake sunk into that brown gloom. Then the diamond ring and beautiful corona appeared! The end of totality was just as stunning, with a sudden return of (muted) daylight. I also saw distinct shadow bands flickering across a white sheet I’d laid out, both before and after totality.

This was a wonderful and deeply personal experience for me, as my Dad had taken me (because I begged) to the 1972 one in Nova Scotia when I was 12, and I learned about this one and had waited literally 45 years to see it (and my Dad, who would have seen this one with me, passed away three years ago). I had other wonderful experiences on the trip which I won’t describe here. Anyway, I’m back. Color me happy! :slight_smile:

Tom

Hi Tom

Thank you very much for sharing your experience.

Maybe you could add a couple of photos?

Best regards,
Henrik

Here’s a video made by a friend of mine who went up the mountain with us. It starts about 8 minutes before totality. It uses a fixed exposure, calibrated for the somewhat dim daylight at the beginning, and goes completely dark during totality. Really, it didn’t look that dark, because the eye and brain do various things to compensate. The actual lighting during totality was about like “civil twilight”, maybe half an hour after sunset (depending on latitude and time of year). The sky was dark enough overhead to see stars down to about magnitude 2 (the bright ones are 0’s and 1’s mainly, and in a really dark sky place you can see down to 6). All around was a shallow golden “sunset” glow. It was absolutely beautiful!

www.wxsim.com/eclipseraw.MOV

Notice how the cumulus clouds are suppressed by the cooling of the moon’s shadow!

good stuff!