On Monday, April 8th, between 15:42 and 20:53 UTC, the moon will pass directly between Earth and the sun, causing a total solar eclipse.
Because the moon is much smaller than Earth, its shadow doesn't completely cover Earth, like ours does it when the positions are reversed in a lunar eclipse, so, unlike a lunar eclipse, the solar eclipse won't be visible from everywhere on Earth that the sun is. The umbra, the dark center of the moon's shadow, where it will completely block the sun, will be an oval about 180km wide, and stretching lengthwise as it wraps around the curve of the Earth, and will track across the surface of Earth in a path of totality starting in the mid-Pacific and traveling across northern Mexico, across the U.S.and a bit of southern Canada from Texas to Maine, across Newfoundland, and out into the North Atlantic. It'll take about four minutes for the shadow to cross any particular spot near the centerline of the path.
The penumbra, the fuzzy outer shadow, where the moon will only partially block the sun, will cut a much broader swath that will cover the eastern Pacific, most of North America (except Alaska), the North Atlantic, and a tiny bit of the western end of Europe before it tracks off Earth entirely.
Because of the convenient track of the path of totality near many of the major population centers of North America, a lot of people are traveling to see the event, and the areas under the path of totality don't have the resources and infrastructure to handle the crowds. My area is expecting something between 40k and 160k people to come in over the weekend, which may not seem like much, but that's somewhere between the population of our largest city and a quarter the population of the entire state. Local authorities have preemptively declared states of emergency and are advising people to make sure they've stocked up on food and gas and to avoid travel. School here has been canceled on Monday. We got a mess of heavy wet snow dumped on us yesterday, too, and though it's melting rapidly and Monday is expected to be sunny (except around 15:30), I'm not sure it'll be gone by Monday, and that may complicate things.
So, anyone got eclipse plans? I'm sitting directly under the path of totality, 21.9 km from the centerline, so my plan is "go outside, look up".
Keeping my fingers crossed that the weather forecast improves, considering my next opportunity for a US total solar eclipse isn't until the 2040s!
