lol.... It is just about that crazy around here too. We have a lot of people from all over the place that are here to view the eclipse.
The Eclipse will be only around 43% here, at 11:07:10 am PDT. It will be 100% where my parents lived in Texas, and 88% where my brother lives in Maryland. Interestingly, though the peak here is only 2 or 3 minutes, it takes around 2 hours to go from 0 to 43% back in zero.
Today is Eclipse day. The streets here are packed, and downtown is strewn with food vendors, trinket sellers, and people.
We are "totally eclipsed" by clouds. It's overcast and rainy so most of the drama will be a non-event. I think the Houston area was getting 93% or something but I haven't been paying much attention.
I wonder how long the eclipse would last from a stationary viewpoint. In other words, the Earth is gonna rotate under the eclipse as the eclipse proceeds from west to east. So the Earth's rotation adds some length of time under the shadow. I'm sure it could be calculated (gonna be latitude-dependent.) I read an article that said the projected Path of Totality may be 2,000 feet narrower than forecast because scientists are using the legacy measurement of 959.63 arc seconds for the radius of the sun, when current thought is the radius is really 959.95 arc seconds. According to the article, “A few city blocks one way or the other could mean 20, 10, or zero seconds of totality.” Uncertainty in the Earth's rotation will also impact The Zone of Totality. ”Traveling towards the center of the path of totality—even a mile or two—will quickly increase the length of totality that people can see.”
I had a friend who grew up near Amish country in Pennsylvania. When tourists flocked in, he and a childhood friend would get slabs of bark and fire up their wood burning guns, burning crude images onto the wood and sell them roadside as Folk Art. The northeast US into Canada is prime eclipse viewing area. You need to set up shop. Maybe little moose wearing sunglasses.
We have thousands of visitors vying for space from which to view the eclipse, so it would make sense to me that we view the eclipse from the comfort of our own yard, where we don't have to vie for space. But no, my wife wants to drive or walk (she hasn't decided where to go yet) to one of the places that have been set up for this, where we will view the eclipse from the midst of a crowd. It makes me think it's not the eclipse she's interested in.
It has reached an eclipse fever pitch here! It is 75 degrees, sunny and calm at this moment so there shouldn’t be any problem seeing the total eclipse. I don’t know who the bean counters are but we now have people from 40 states in our area visiting so far. Some came as far away as Alaska, Hawaii, and the Virgin Islands. My husband is watching our somewhat small airport on line seeing what kind of planes that have been coming in and where they are from. There are some expensive interesting planes flying in such as airbus and a Piaggio's Avanti plane made by Ferrari and many other cool planes. We will step outside in the yard in a couple of hours to watch the eclipse then scurry back in.
So who here has special equipment for looking at the eclipse itself, and who (like myself) intends to go "be in it" but not look at it?
After typing this, I found an 18" long box and made a pinhole camera and saw a partially occluded sun projected onto it. It's heeeerrrrrrre.
We are at maximum coverage here and on our way back to normal. We have only between 65 and 70% coverage at maximum and it’s really underwhelming. The light is like a partly cloudy day but has kind of an odd cast to it and the sky is completely blue. It’s way over rated at this % of coverage.