Yesterday was the eclipse, which was kind of a big deal where I'm from. They had been talking about it on the radio and news stations for weeks, probably at least a full month prior actually.
They shut down schools so that kids wouldn't go blind. They sold special glasses for a few bucks at stores and online and libraries gave them away for free. The city of Niagara Falls called a state of emergency due to how many visitors they expected to get. Hotels cancelled booking that were reserved long in advance and then rebooked by the hotels for 100's of dollars more (I heard that a normal room rate was around $700/night).
In other words there was a lot of talk, a lot of hype, and a lot of shenanigans surrounding the event.
I was basically a nay sayer the entire time leading up to it, telling my co-workers that it would probably be dumb and nothing at all like what the media was making it out to be. People around the office were saying that it would be as dark as night and I was there saying "yeah right, it will probably be like a cloudy day at best." I told them that I would be there in the background with my hands cupped around my mouth like a make shift megaphone yelling "Boooooooooo."
In the end I ate my words though and even admitted that I was wrong. I swallowed my pride and announced to everyone that I was indeed impressed.
The city that I'm in is located right on the edge of the path of totality so the sun was completely covered by the moon, minus just a small speck on one of the edges. It did indeed get dark in the end. The city went from being bright and sunny one minute to being completely plunged in darkness just a few minutes later. Then just a few minutes after that it was back to being completely light out again. In only minutes it was as if nothing had happened at all.
The sun was overhead during the eclipse but looking out to the horizon it looked like a sunset. Looking in the opposite direction it was even darker - essentially completely black in that part of town. If we weren't in a city with lights in buildings I'm sure that it would be almost pitch black out.
A few people had glasses in the room that we were in and they shared them with everyone else, so we all got a turn to see the eclipse. It was actually coolest when some of the sun was still showing in my opinion because after that it didn't really look like anything but a black dot. My friend and coworker took the photo below when the sun was starting to come through again. I couldn't get close to the window because everyone was crowded there by that point. The photo looked really good on her phone but got a little distorted and pixilated when she sent it to me. IPhone photos don't send well to other phones, if you didn't know that.
There were some strange side effects during the eclipse that I wasn't expecting. The first I noticed when I tried to make a call from my office about 20 minutes before the event. There was so much static on the line that I could barely hear the person I was talking to.
The next thing that happened was that I got a major headache that came completely out of nowhere about 30 minutes before the full Eclipse. It seemed to peak about 10 minutes after and then it slowly dissipated over the next hour or so. I'm guessing that it was caused by a rapid change in pressure outside but I don't know for certain.
I didn't notice this myself because I was indoors but other people who went outside said that the temperature dropped rapidly and was immediately quite cold during the event. I guess that makes sense given that it tends to get cold at night time but I still wouldn't have expected that to happen had someone not mentioned it.
So that was my eclipse experience. All in all I was much more impressed by it than I thought I would be. I'm glad that I went and checked it out.
What you describe here is what I had fantasies about experiencing, however, it was just dark and grey with no visibility whatsoever.
Now that you mention that, maybe it was about the same here, but we had rain.
Yeah, that must have been the cause.
It's great seeing your photos and it seems you had a great vantage point:)))
We found a room with a lot of windows on the unit that I work on in the hospital. So we saw it through glass but definitely got a good view of it.
North Wales, UK, 24 hours of solid rain, all I saw was grey heavy clouds!
That's typically the case with any natural rare phenomenon. Guaranteed to be clouds during any meteor shower - without fail. We got pretty lucky this time. There were some clouds but a thin layer and not enough to cover the eclipse completely. We still got a decent view luckily
Yes you did lucky you on this occasion
This eclipse made me remember when I was very little and the eclipse happened. My teachers had to put me inside the class so that I would not go blind just like what they did for the kids in the recent eclipse…
Yeah it makes sense to do that. I'm sure that a lot of people looked directly at it without the glasses. This was the first total eclipse that I've ever experienced.