Monday April 8, 2024 about 2:00pm. Total Solar eclipse across the Texas Hill Country along with the rest of the country. Last one in Texas this century.

Has anyone made plans to spend that day somewhere special yet?

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/eclipses/home/

I just looked it up, turns out April 8, 2024 is a Monday.
We will drive somewhere to see it. Kids can miss a day of school.

Guess I could have read the first word in your post to see it is a Monday. Maybe I will read completely by that time.

Definitely worth it. I took my kids out of school for the last one and drove to Nebraska. It was amazing and they still talk about the memories and how amazing the experience was.

Yes, I do have plans... friends in the perfect location.

Given this area is so much more congested than Nebraska, I'll share a few tips:

DO plan to be there early, and have a backup plan. My plan for the last one was more central in Nebraska, but the weather showed that there was chance of clouds, but farther west was a better bet, so we shifted our plan.

DO get your safety glasses/eye protection well in advance. I waited, and then was nervous the entire time that I got knockoffs and my kids were going to be blind for life.

DO expect MAJOR traffic headaches after it is over. (It took me about 2 hours just to get moving out of Scotts Bluff, Nebraska, not a large town, and we had to re-route west and come home via Cheyenne, WY and Denver, CO rather than straight south back to Texas.

DO get as close to the center as you can to maximize your time in totality.

DO NOT think that close is good enough... I can't stress this enough, the difference between 99% totality and 100% is as great as the difference between 0 and 99%. I'm not exaggerating here, don't make this mistake. You want totality or you might as well not bother.

Honestly this is one of my absolutely favorite events I've ever experienced and I am giddy about the opportunity to do it again next year.

Quote:

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Last one this century.

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you mean just in Texas?

There will be many more total eclipses in this century, with a few of them crossing US states.

2044 (ND,MT), 2045 (going through SEC country), 2052 (AL,GA,FL), 2078 (SEC country again), 2099 (NE and great lakes)

Yes, I believe in Texas. There are some annular eclipses coming along over the years in the Great State.

Lots of good information for planning here:

https://www.greatamericaneclipse.com/april-8-2024/

I want to do the chartered flight and see it from up high. You know, just in case it's cloudy that day.

Also there's an annular solar eclipse coming up Oct 14th of this year. The path of that eclipse and the total next year intersects near Vanderpool, Tx. Being in the path of two solar eclipses just 6mo apart is an exceedingly rare event.

Utopia TX is a good place to catch both. My brother is putting this event together if anyone is interested:

https://eclipseutopia.com/

was looking at mazatlan mexico, but the recent cartel violence is going to dissuade the spouse from going (especially since we'll have a 3-yearold along)

Definitely worth it. I'll be living in CO then but plan on making the trip back home to TX to take my then to be 8 year old son to see it. Was living in Omaha during the last one and made the drive east to catch it, was a really cool experience. If it's anything like it was in NE expect traffic to be a ***** that day.

Burnet/Lake Buchanan is in ideal spot. I have relatives with lake houses... if you have a friend, that's an awesome way to do it, you can hang out afterwards and enjoy the lake while traffic subsides. If you don't have a friend, you'll need a lot of money. Rentals are going for several thousand a night. I did find a couple of Air BnB's that didn't seem clued in, but there is risk they will cancel on you and rebook when they realize how much money they can make.

I'll be heading west from Austin to see this. I'm thinking west of the city in the hill country will be a great viewing spot.

Its crossing the border illegally

Already planned to watch it in Llano. Cousins have an old family place there.

fyi

Interesting. In-laws are in Georgetown. Might have to just drive up and post up on Ft Hood that day

Curious why the October 2023 one is not getting talked about near as much as the 2024 ?

lazuras_dc said:

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Curious why the October 2023 one is not getting talked about near as much as the 2024 ?

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No totality

My wife and I will definitely be in Texas for this eclipse. We were fortunate to experience the last total eclipse at our home in Tennessee on August 21, 2017. The really neat thing about this eclipse is that there will be over 4 minutes of totality whereas the one we experienced in 2017 was only 90 seconds. It was a surreal experience, and I strongly encourage everyone to take advantage of this.

I'd love to be perched on top of Enchanted Rock on April 8, 2024.

One last thing...buy your eclipse 'glasses' early. Those glasses were going for $20 (if you could get them) as the date got closer.

Yup. Will be setting up chairs in the backyard!

Apache said:

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fyi

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Is there any significance to those large circles? I assume not.

No. I don't really understand why maps are so difficult to make. This one is horrible... not only do those large circles have no meaning and create confusion, there is also so little data labeled on that map that it's very difficult to figure out where exactly to go. I am a lover of great maps, and they are very hard to find.

And while I'm ranting, do you know who makes the worst maps? Apple. I can't tell you how many times I zoom and zoom in to get a street name, and they don't put the labels on very many of them. Cities, too. It's maddening.

Here is a map with a little more info & no annoying circles

Apache is my map hero for today.

Except the other map has vital info like the time in totality within the path. And if you are taking pics thats crucial.

Mathguy64 said:

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Except the other map has vital info like the time in totality within the path. And if you are taking pics thats crucial.

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Fair enough, and with that comment, the circles suddenly seem a little less useless.

Hey (&*$#:

I found 2 maps for y'all. Print them both out & you'll have all the info you need.
Otherwise, find a better one & quit yer b*tchin.

No sarcasm here, but can someone fill me in on why this is such a big deal? I've got kids, would love them to see something unique, but not sure why a solar eclipse causes this much interest? Help me out here...

Have you ever seen one?

Great time to be from Waco, bad time to be moving to Sydney.

aggiedadofpanda said:

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No sarcasm here, but can someone fill me in on why this is such a big deal? I've got kids, would love them to see something unique, but not sure why a solar eclipse causes this much interest? Help me out here...

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I don't know how to describe it, but it is one of the most dramatic events I've ever witnessed.

Watching the sun disappear from 100% visible to 1% visible is "ok, cool." You have to look through your glasses, and the sun starts to look like a crescent moon. Overall, the light around you doesn't really change much until you get to about 10% remaining, but even then it looks like mid evening outside. Cool, but far from life changing. You may have experienced a partial eclipse like this somewhere along the way, and it wasn't that impressive.

This I why I say you can't just settle for being close, even 99%.

Then, that last 1% disappears... if you are on a high precipice and you look the direction, you can literally see the shadow of the sun descend on you (very rapidly) and all of the sudden, broad daylight becomes like night. The temperature even drops. You can take your glasses off and look directly at the black disk of the moon covering the sun. In this case, you'll be able to do it for almost 5 minutes. You'll have known the darkness was coming, but trust me, you'll be impressed. Stars even appear.

There is also the community of it. In all likelihood, you'll be in the company of many others who came to see this. Experiencing it en masse is just cool.




(That video is cool, but remember, camera's adjust, and so do your eyes, so the drama is greater than what appears in that video. Up until the last couple of minutes before totality, your eyes adjust so that it looks more light than dark, and the final curtain of darkness descends rather quickly.)

How about the fact that at on August 21, 2017 in Louisville, Tennessee at 1:29 p.m. it's rather dusk-like. At 1:30 p.m. it's dark...like dark dark. The fact this one will have 4 minutes of that makes this one a no brainer. Just do it...you and your kids will talk about it till the day you die.

Thanks guys, I appreciate the responses and the context. Sounds like a neat thing to do with the kids.

Just the fact that these things can be predicted with certainty is pretty amazing to me.