Total Solar Eclipse coming to NY: April 8, 2024

There were more clouds than I hoped at Snow Ridge, but it was still a spectacular event. The clouds thickened annoyingly after 2. We took the lift up to the summit and walked to a spot at the top of the ridge on the South Slope. For a minute as I was waiting on the platform for my chair up, I thought I might instead be assisting in a lift evac when the safety bar fell off the chair I was about to get on as it went around the wheel in the base house. But they just marked the chair with orange tape, moved the fallen safety bar out of the way, and started it back up. Have to say it was a bit weird running down the ramp at the top getting whacked a bit by the chair. I was also a little concerned when we first arrived and the chair was running off and on at a super low speed while the engine in the base station was making noises like an old car that was never going to stay running. But it did!

We had a nice view toward the sun to the south plus a sweeping view out across the valley to the north and west. We could still see the progress of the eclipse through the clouds with the eclipse glasses. And once I thought totality was just going to be the shadow, but no ring, the ring was there, the darkness was amazing and the experience was almost as good as the clearer day in Grand Island in 2017. It was awesome to go from people being underwhelmed and kind of disappointed even seconds before totality to blown away by the spectacle. We had a solid 3+ minutes with a good view of the ring around the sun despite the cloud cover. The first light coming around the moon at the end of totality was also almost shocking.

There were no chair rides down, so we took our time walking down the South Slope and got to walk through the few patches of remaining snow. Another highlight was watching someone slide down one of the snow patches on his back, and when a few of us applauded he yelled up "I'm just a 74-year-old kid". Both the ride up and walk down also gave a good perspective on just how damaging the tornado was. I didn't make it up to Snow Ridge to ski this season so it was my first time seeing it.

Snow Ridge did a nice job with the event, other than some confusion in the tavern about how to order and orders getting lost. It was great to have a spot to park with food and rest rooms run by the great people at Snow Ridge and surrounded by a nice crowd of friendly and happy people. The chair ride was a nice bonus and gave us a fantastic view with the daylight off in the distance across the panoramic view while it was so dark where we stood. I don't know how many people they had but it was a nice crowd and the parking lot was pretty full.

I'm very happy with where we chose to "get in the shadow" this time, and consider us fortunate to have experienced the show we did despite the clouds rolling in at a pretty unfortunate time.
 
Just for historical reference . . . a list of ski areas/resorts in the northeast that had stuff going on for the eclipse.

April 4, 2024
 
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7 hours to get back to the city (normally it's 4 for me door to door). Well worth it though. Really amazing experience that I will not soon forget.
 
We walked downtown to Lake Flower and watched. Wow. Now I know what the fuss is about. Saw some fotos of Northway traffic yesterday, it looked like a cluster. Glad I wasn't in that.
 
I have to say I had low expectations and was impressed. I only stepped out for a few minutes on Long Island (about 90% eclipse) and thought it was pretty cool.

PS it seems places in the cats had 100% eclipse. I wonder if all those folks on the Northway realized that.
 
Western Oh-High-Oh could get be clear.

You were right then you were wrong and then you were right again 🙃

We started out in Niagara Falls area , we stayed in Oakville Ca. Sunday it was obvious that we were not going to luck out so we called an audible . My son saw Cleveland was going to be good so after not much coaxing I relented and we left early am.
Passing Erie Pa. the skies started to clear so we found a small beach park in Conneaut OH . Waiting patiently the skies cleared and the temperature hit 70° then after 45 minutes the clouds formed . As the eclipse progressed the temperature dropped to 57°!
That worked in our favor and the clouds thinned out to just a small haze. A few stars were visible as well.

My son has gotten pretty proficient at taking pictures with his IPhone though our telescope.
It’s too bulky so he bought a small spotting scope and practiced a little beforehand.

He did a great job getting pictures! I was happy he didn’t incinerate his phone when the sun returned. What we thought was the diamond ring affect turned out to be some solar prominences. He’s talking about Spain in 2026 lol.

It was worth the pain and effort to see!
 

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