HV Solar Eclipse: Weather Forecast, When To Look Up, Totality Path

HUDSON VALLEY, NY - It’s time in the Hudson Valley for the Monday, April 8 total solar eclipse. While the sunny morning has given way to high thin clouds, you can still experience the phenomenon.

"Regardless of the potential cloud cover, don’t look directly at the sun, use eye protection," Bruce Furbeck of First Due Weather said on Facebook. "It will get darker and cooler during the eclipse period between about 2 PM to 4:30 PM as the sun is blocked by the moon ... Cars will need to use their headlights to drive safely."

In the region, the moon will cover from 95 to 90 percent of the sun, according to a NASA map that is searchable by zip code.

But when should you put on eclipse glasses and look up at the darkening sky?

Here are the details:

Partial eclipse begins as early as: 2:11 p.m.

Totality begins: 2:54 p.m.

Maximum: 3:27 p.m.

Partial ends: 4:37 p.m.

The eclipse will last about 2 hours and 26 minutes from beginning to end in the Hudson Valley.

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It will be mostly sunny, except for a few clouds in the afternoon, according to the National Weather Service. The silver lining: you won’t need a heavy coat to watch the eclipse, with daytime high temperatures up to 60 degrees.

"Although there may be some high clouds around, it is not forecast to be completely overcast during the time of the eclipse," the National Weather Service New York station said in a statement.

The total solar eclipse starts in Mexico, entering the United States in Texas and traveling through Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, as well as small parts of Tennessee and Michigan, before entering Canada in southern Ontario through Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Cape Breton before exiting continental North America on the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland, Canada.

• Related: Animals May Behave Oddly During Eclipse

It will be March 30, 2033, before another total solar eclipse touches the United States, and that’s only on the tip of Alaska. It’ll be Aug. 12, 2044, before the next eclipse sweeps across the lower 48 states, with parts of Montana and North Dakota experiencing totality.

Be Sure To Protect Your Eyes

Except during the brief total phase of a total solar eclipse, when the sun’s face is completely obscured by the moon, it is not safe to look directly at the sun without protective eye equipment, according to NASA.

• Help Kids View The Solar Eclipse Safely Without Damaging Their Eyes

Keep this in mind, too: Viewing any part of the bright sun through a camera lens, binoculars, or a telescope without a special-purpose solar filter secured over the front of the optics will instantly cause severe eye injury. One other safe way to view the eclipse is with a do-it-yourself pinhole projector that shows the sun on a nearby surface. The American Astronomical Society has pinhole projector DIY instructions.

A Bigger Deal Than 2017

The duration of totality in the United States will be up to 4 minutes and 24 seconds in Eagle Pass, Texas, beginning at 1:27 p.m. CDT. For comparison, the eclipse reaches totality about an hour later, at 3:29 p.m. EDT in Jackman, Maine, and lasts about 3 minutes and 26 seconds.
Totality will last twice as long as in the coast-to-coast solar eclipse in 2017, and the number of people in the path of totality — an estimated 32 million people — is much greater.

Eclipse Opens Scientific Window

Another thing that makes the 2024 solar eclipse markedly different from the 2017 event is that it’s occurring as the sun is at its peak activity cycle, called solar maximum. In 2017, the sun was approaching minimum. This year’s eclipse opens a unique window for scientists to study the sun’s corona.

“The eclipse that we have coming up in 2024 is going to be a very different eclipse from what we saw in 2017 because this corona that we see is going to have much more structure,” Lisa Upton, a solar scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, told Scientific American.

The violent solar storms occurring right now are responsible for auroras that dance far outside their Arctic and Antarctic ranges but also carry the potential to knock out internet satellites for months, take down power grids, and interfere with navigation satellites. Right now, these events happen with little warning, but scientists are working on their ability to predict space weather.

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