The Eclipse Happened

[The Top Crusader]

Depending on where you live, of course.

It was neat.

We had I think 4 or so minutes of totality.

[Catspaw]

That must have been very cool! I wasn't in the totality zone. I bought eclipse glasses (official ones from a planetarium so I knew they were legit) and watched what we did have, and it was neat. It won't happen again in North American until 2044, so I thought I might as well check it out and enjoy it. It was interesting to view different parts of the sun being covered.

Top, was it totally crazy being in the totality area? I was seeing stories of hordes of tourists.

[The Top Crusader]

They warned us of 100,000 to 200,000 tourists and tons of traffic etc (they closed all the schools because totality was at like 3:08 and they thought it would be BEDLAM IN THE STREETS, but at least that gave me an excuse to take the day off of work), but it was like... some extra people but not enough to notice an impact on traffic. I heard some people had cell phone issues but it didn't seem to affect me.

Very disappointing, I was hoping it'd be like an end of the world scenario of some kind.

[Laura Ingalls]

We had over 80%, but I was late hearing about it and didn't get any glasses. I constructed a viewer out of an empty PoP-Tart box, where the image was projected on white paper inside...it sort of worked, but not that great. If I hadn't known about the eclipse, it would have been hard to tell it was any different than an overcast day.

[Catspaw]

They warned us of 100,000 to 200,000 tourists and tons of traffic etc (they closed all the schools because totality was at like 3:08 and they thought it would be BEDLAM IN THE STREETS, but at least that gave me an excuse to take the day off of work), but it was like... some extra people but not enough to notice an impact on traffic. I heard some people had cell phone issues but it didn't seem to affect me.

Very disappointing, I was hoping it'd be like an end of the world scenario of some kind.

That does indeed sound extremely disappointing. So sorry to hear that it was not the end of the world. Here's hoping for 2044!

I heard some schools were closing so that kids wouldn't be walking home right during the eclipse, when they would be tempted to look up at the sun while not properly supervised.

Laura, it's interesting that even at 80% it wasn't that noticeable. What a reminder that the sun gives off a lot of light!

[The Top Crusader]

We had over 80%, but I was late hearing about it and didn't get any glasses. I constructed a viewer out of an empty PoP-Tart box, where the image was projected on white paper inside...it sort of worked, but not that great. If I hadn't known about the eclipse, it would have been hard to tell it was any different than an overcast day.

Yeah, I had never experienced totality before, and I had always *heard* it got dark like night time, but we were watching up to the last minute and it maybe was just a tad dim (hard to tell with taking the eclipse glasses on and off if it really was or eyes were just adjusting) and I was starting to think the darkness was overhyped... even with a tiny sliver of sun it still was more or less normally bright. Then all of a sudden it was night time.

Stupid sun came back, though.

[Calhackett]

One thing that I saw that was cool was that we had a 4.8 earthquake in my area the day before the eclipse and then the totality in my area was around 4:18 and Exodus 4:18 is “'If they will not believe you,' God said, 'or listen to the first sign, they may believe the latter sign"