2024 April North American Eclipse Chasing Part 1
Why I Cared About Seeing a Solar Eclipse
I was living in San Francisco back in 2017 when a total solar eclipse was last set to sweep across North America. I’d never seen a total eclipse, only a partial one when I was a kid. Oregon would be in the path of totality, so I decided to plan a trek to go see it. I rented a camper van and set out to the Ochoco National Forest, northeast of Bend.
The experience was truly incredible, both the adventure of trekking to a specific spot and the experience of totality. Witnessing a total solar eclipse has an ineffable quality. Many words have been used to describe it, but it is one of those things that must be personally experienced to fully comprehend.
The Escape Camper Van I rented in the field I chose on a logging road in Ochoco National Forest in Oregon.
Planning Where to See It
I enjoyed the experience so much I knew I wanted to repeat it when the next suitable eclipse came around. I contemplated traveling to one of the pair of eclipses in Chile and Argentina in 2019 and 2020, but work commitments and COVID scuppered my plans for those. After that, the April 8, 2024 eclipse, traversing Mexico, the US, and Canada, was not to be missed.
Months ahead, I did some research on the best viewing location. There are a few important factors to consider, including accessibility, likelihood of crowding, potential obstructions (such as trees, buildings, or tall mountains), and, crucially, the expected cloud cover and weather conditions. I found a handy website, run by a guy in France named Xavier Jubier, that compiles loads of technical information about most eclipses, including cloud cover averages for the specific month along the centerline of totality. For this eclipse, the chart looked like this:
The average cloud cover of every location from the Pacific to the Atlantic for the April 8, 2024 Total Solar Eclipse.
Based on this, Mexico looked by far like the best bet. Torreón was particularly appealing, since American Airlines flies regularly into Monterrey, and Torreón is fairly close by. I had a vague plan for this to be my viewing spot in the early part of planning.
I let this idea sit for several months, and in the meantime we decided to move from Washington, DC to New York. In all the chaos of moving and settling with no break in my demanding work schedule, we still had not finalized our plans for Mexico. Not to mention 2024 has been and will continue to be packed with travel, with three weddings and a weeklong national park camping trip planned for later in the year.
I decided, instead of making a logistically challenging international trip happen in crunch time, the next best thing on short notice was to rent a camper van as I did in 2017. Since nowhere we could drive to was guaranteed to have clear skies, we would check the weather forecasts like a hawk in the days leading up the the eclipse and then start driving in the most favorable direction.
Our plan was to head first to Bennington, Vermont, where Jordan’s mom Abby lives, on the Friday three days before the eclipse, then we’d make our final determination about the viewing location. Based on the weather, we were prepared to drive to Western New York (or even farther to Ohio if necessary), Northern New York, Vermont, or Maine.
I followed several long term forecast outlets as early as 10 days before the event, but the most helpful tool, released a few days before, was from the New York Times, who combined the cloud cover models with the path of totality, showing the situation across the continent at a glance. To the surprise of me and millions of others, the converging consensus of weather models showed that the expected cloud cover was almost the exact inverse of the chart above. Mexico and Texas would be cloudy. Northern New England, and the Maritime Provinces would have blissfully clear skies.
Darker grays indicate a cloudier forecast. The only area on the path of totality forecasted to be completely free of clouds was New England and Canada.
And, with all that preparation behind us, we rented a van at Escape Campervans in Jersey City, and headed off!
To be continuned in Part 2…
