Honestly. I think the cheering is weird. Yes, it's cool, it's nature, it's a natural scientific thing. But cheering? Normal for a birthday, sports event etc...not really appropriate for an eclipse. Like I understand a sigh of amazement, even screaming how cool it was. But something about cheering for this seems off.

Anonymous wrote:
That's why people made an effort to get to the path of totality. It gets pitch black and the stars come out, and animals get a little concerned.

I would have traveled if I could. The kids and I just went out to observe with our glasses and I explained that the sun is so powerful, even covered at more than 80%, it's practically broad daylight.

It does not get pitch dark in totality and you cannot see any stars. BUT it looks like dawn and sunset 360' around- it is very cool. Plus seeing the moon blocking the sun and being able to see the sun's corona is also cool. We drove to Tennessee on SUnday and back yesterday. It was definitely worth it.

For those who were only in cloudy areas, did you even look? I'm the guy who was at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. We had about 4-5 times over the first 1.5 hours that we had clouds passing overhead. Other than the thickest parts of passing clouds, I could still see the sun and the eclipse through the eclipse glasses. It was pretty cool that although you couldn't see the sun while looking up, in some cases, if you put the glasses on, you could still see the partially eclipsed sun.

We drove to see totality and it was the best thing ever. Total party atmosphere and perfect weather. The whole town we stayed in was festive for days and we met so many lovely people from NY Texas and China!!! It was absolutely amazing to experience such a wonderful event surrounded by appreciative people. I'm sorry you weren't able to travel and make an adventure out of it, but maybe you can do it in 7 years when it happens again.

... and it did get noticeably darker and cooler.

We are in McLean. It was cloudy and it did poured heavily, but kids and I still got the chance to see the eclipse through our cereal box pinhole projectors and our eclipse sunglasses. We had a lot of fun and all of us look forward to 2024. By that time my youngest will be 11.5 and oldest will be a high school senior. I hope we can make a trip to see totality.

Clearly the Millennials are why we can't have nice eclipses anymore-always looking down at their phones, why should the sun and moon even bother!

I wanted it dark outside but you gentrifying urban try hards gentrified it.

She should move. If she lived in a better area in a better school district, this wouldn't have happened to her. You get what you pay for.

Anonymous wrote:You should definitely write a letter of complaint! If no one speaks up, these shoddy eclipses will keep happening.

Make Eclipses Great Again!

You should definitely write a letter of complaint! If no one speaks up, these shoddy eclipses will keep happening.

Anonymous wrote:Let's also not turn it into a dispute about people being jaded vs not. The "nothing special" posters (myself included) were people who were unfortunate enough to be in a cloudy area at the time. Those who were thrilled to see it didn't have the misfortune of having cloud coverage at the peak. Believe me all of you who thought it was pretty neat would not have had the same reaction if you had seen it from my neighborhood.

You know, the eclipse lasted for nearly 3 hours. It started around 1:18 and slowly progressed until 81% coverage at 2:42. Then the moon waned until 4:01. The storm was a very localized storm in just a few parts of Northern Va. If it was cloudy or rainy where you were and it was important to see the eclipse, you could have driven about 5-10 miles in almost any direction, parked your car and gotten out and seen at least an hours worth of the slowly waning moon from in front of the sun.

I understand if you didn't prioritize this and it wasn't that important to you. However, it was rather special, even if it was less important to you. You didn't value seeing the eclipse and that's fine; but not because the eclipse itself was not special.

Hopefully by the year 2024 someone will be offering travel packages to the moon so my family and I can watch the eclipse from there.

Relatives only 30 minutes away from us in No. va had different weather. At 2:40, we had partly cloudiness but still enough sun to be able to tell that the sunny spots were darker, but not that dark.

Relatives nearby had cloudiness at 2:40 and rain.

We were disappointed and they were also. I don't think it was from being jaded. I had looked up the simulator, and that showed that the eclipse would be much darker here, at least for a few minutes. I think the disappointment was from all the hype.

We did hear the crickets chirp and the slight darkness was cool, but it was very gradual over 90 minutes.

Anonymous wrote:I'm pretty sure the windiness was from the storm, not the eclipse, otherwise it would get windy every night at dusk.

I was wondering about that as well.