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| April 8 Sunrise: A Rare Clear Morning |
Monday April 8 dawned with a promise of a clear day - a rare thing
in Vermont at this time of year: according to the weatherman, the date has been
sunny only 17% of the time in the last 25 years.
As mentioned in my posting last month, here in Randolph we were in
the 98-99% path, but close enough wasn’t going to be good enough for us,* what with totality being just a few miles away.
So, we packed some lunches, blankets and folding chairs, and with five
out-of-state guests and four dogs in tow, we drove west over the hills to
Sugarbush ski resort.
Sugarbush has two main mountains: Lincoln Peak, the larger one,
was still fully open to skiers and was staging a massive party for the event. At the smaller Mt. Ellen a few miles away, the skiing had already closed for the
season, but small print on the resort’s web page indicated that the lodge would
be open for a few hours that day.
After seeing the Lincoln Peak parking lots nearing capacity by 10:30 in the morning, we took our chances and drove to Mt. Ellen, finding – perfect! - a near empty parking lot, a fully open lodge and bar (and bathrooms), an open deck with plenty of comfortable tables and chairs, and a quiet guitarist to serenade us (with multiple sets of the obligatory “Here Comes the Sun”). Oh, and did I mention: the weather remained mostly clear through the entire afternoon.
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| Waiting for the show |
We spent a pleasant few hours chatting and picnicking. We also watched a number of hearty so called "skinners", who were hiking up the mountain on cross country skis or snowshoes to catch the eclipse at the top and ski down afterwards .
At around 2 PM, the.moon began its path across the sun, at which point we donned our eclipse glasses to catch occasional glimpses of its progress. The effect was that of a giant dimmer switch in the sky.
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| Empty slopes: John's brother & dogs; "Skinners" visible in the background |
We were amazed at how much light the sun emitted even when only a tiny sliver of it remained, and how much dusky light there remained even when that sliver disappeared and totality began just before 3:30 PM. We could take off our glasses and gaze at the spectacle with the naked eye - a black hole surrounded by a halo of light. The guitarist stopped playing and the crowd (numbering around 150), stood silent.
Lacking special camera lenses, any picture of the eclipse still showed the sun as a yellow blob in the sky. Since it was futile to try to catch a photograph, it was time to just sit back and enjoy this once-in-a-lifetime show, and to imprint it in my memory. It would only last three minutes, and there would be no instant replays or rewinds.
We all reached for our jackets as the temperature dropped by several degrees
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| Without special camera lenses during totality, the sun still appeared whole in pictures |
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| Dusky - not black - sky during moments of totality |
The three minutes over, the group erupted in a round of applause. Our glasses were back on and we watched as the moon receded, the sun emerging as a sideways Cheshire cat grin and slowly reclaiming its dominant position in the sky.
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| Picture copied from USA Today |
Soon after, we hit the road for home. A normally 40 minute drive on local routes took us an extra hour: traffic from points further north was taking the same local routes in order to avoid I-89, which was reported to be at a 5-10 mph crawl.
The chamber of commerce estimated 160,000 visitors to the state for the event, equal to about one quarter of Vermont's population. News reports that evening and into the wee hours of the next morning spoke of 10 to 12 hour drives to get from northern Vermont down to points in Connecticut and Massachusetts. In all that, however, there were only ten reported crashes in the state that evening and night.
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The next total solar eclipse is coming in just two years on August 12, 2026. To experience totality, you'll have to go to Greenland, Iceland, or some parts of Europe (the northeastern US will just get a passing glimpse). SEE PATH HERE.
If I don't get to travel to any of those places, maybe I'll just plan to save the date for the next total eclipse in the US, which will occur on August 23, 2044. I'll only be 92, so maybe it'll be a good chance to take a road trip out to North Dakota to see it. Let me know if you'd like to carpool.
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For more pictures of the April 8 eclipse from our local media, see: VTdigger.org
* There are any number of analogies out there contrasting total vs. partial: CLICK HERE for examples
