West Michigan Wins Another Dud
Friday, 24 October 2014 00:12![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dr_phil_physicsLast week I was told that someone was talking about a solar eclipse Thursday locally at 5:30am. Right. That wouldn't help, especially this side of the equinox. But it turns out we really were scheduled to have a partial solar eclipse today -- starting at 5:40pm. Oh that could work.
A while back I had a list of eclipse dates, but it expired. And frankly I've had my eye on The Big One -- August 2017 total solar eclipse over a wide swath of the country. Never been inside totality.
Today's was said to be about 40% I guess.
But by last night, as usual, it wasn't a done deal. I cannot tell you how many solar and lunar eclipses I haven't been able to see in West Michigan. There was a six hour window for the clouds to roll in.
This morning was foggy. Too bad the eclipse wasn't at 8am, because the sun's disk was just visible through the haze above the Grand Valley. Almost stopped for a picture anyway.
5:20pm, after a bright sunny day, I'm loading up to come home and took a picture of the Sun just disappearing into that cloud bank coming in. 5:20...
As I approached Allendale, there was an orange stain on the horizon. And a flash of an orange ball on the horizon. 6:35... Next time I saw the horizon, it was after 6:40 -- sunset. I would've lived with a sunset eclipse picture.
Sigh.
I tell you -- August 2017 I'm going to be like a tornado chaser with the WiFi hotspot and weather.com...
Dr. Phil
A while back I had a list of eclipse dates, but it expired. And frankly I've had my eye on The Big One -- August 2017 total solar eclipse over a wide swath of the country. Never been inside totality.
Today's was said to be about 40% I guess.
But by last night, as usual, it wasn't a done deal. I cannot tell you how many solar and lunar eclipses I haven't been able to see in West Michigan. There was a six hour window for the clouds to roll in.
This morning was foggy. Too bad the eclipse wasn't at 8am, because the sun's disk was just visible through the haze above the Grand Valley. Almost stopped for a picture anyway.
5:20pm, after a bright sunny day, I'm loading up to come home and took a picture of the Sun just disappearing into that cloud bank coming in. 5:20...
As I approached Allendale, there was an orange stain on the horizon. And a flash of an orange ball on the horizon. 6:35... Next time I saw the horizon, it was after 6:40 -- sunset. I would've lived with a sunset eclipse picture.
Sigh.
I tell you -- August 2017 I'm going to be like a tornado chaser with the WiFi hotspot and weather.com...
Dr. Phil
