Thursday, April 11, 2024

Viewing a total solar eclipse on a cloudy day in Boerne, Texas

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back on August 21, 2017 my wife and I viewed a total solar eclipse in Idaho from a golf course on the shore of Lake Cascade. We had a perfect view with no interfering cloud cover. I blogged about it on August 30, 2017 in a post titled An event that will not soon be eclipsed. That post ended by stating that the next one is is 2024 and perhaps we will see it down in Texas.

 

On April 8, 2024 we glimpsed the total eclipse from the City Park in Boerne, Texas as shown above. We had flown down to San Antonio. Our original plan was to drive northwest about 55 miles to Kerrville where totality would be at about 1:30 PM and last for almost four and a half minutes. But Interstate 10 was clogged by so much traffic that by 12:30 we were only about halfway there. After around 25 miles we stopped at a gas station in Boerne, used the rest room, and found their City Park via a Google search. We drove there and parked at one end in a fenced-in lawn by their Agricultural Museum, which has a large collection of vintage farm equipment. Then we had our lunch while sitting at a picnic table and waited.

 

As we approached totality, the sky was almost completely cloudy. There were only a few seconds where we got to see the moon obscuring the sun. But we saw confused birds land in trees. At totality it got dark as a late night – which still was very impressive. Some folks set off fireworks to celebrate.

 

For the 2017 eclipse we had felt a sudden drastic drop in the temperature. With the clouds in 2024 there was no drastic drop. We drove slowly back to San Antonio on Texas 46 to Bulverde and then US 281 - rather than Interstate 10.    

 


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