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August 21, 2017 Solar Eclipse


Hoosier
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16 hours ago, Hoosier said:

Almost getting into the end of the GFS timeframe.  What's being advertised at the very end of tonight's 00z run would cause some concern rolling forward... pretty stout ridge but the placement is not ideal... could be vulnerable to convective concerns on the northern edges. Fortunately this is a 16 day prog.

Thought of that this afternoon, we can already see what systems could impact the eclipse on the 16th day of the run. So the first frame of a model showing eclipse weather (hour 384) will be tomorrows 12z run then? I don't see any talk about the Euro weekly ensembles which we know gives us a hint for pattern.
 

3 hours ago, Hoosier said:

I saw that the final few hotel rooms in Carbondale we're going for ~$500+ (I actually can't believe there was any vacancy).

I'm surprised those weren't going for over $1000. My feeling is Carbondale will be inundated with Chicago residents. I also heard that there were still spots in totality path with vacancies which totally floored me; and weren't overly expensive either. I would have been willing to drive 200 miles out of the path just for a room.

I'm unsure if this is uncouth, but what are the best communities online for this? I'm most interested in following those who are last minute planners and don't have a room, how they make out and what they experience in the journey.
 

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19 hours ago, Torchageddon said:

 

I'm unsure if this is uncouth, but what are the best communities online for this? I'm most interested in following those who are last minute planners and don't have a room, how they make out and what they experience in the journey.
 

No idea.  I only do weather boards.  

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The last few runs of the GFS are suggesting cloud/precip concerns in the Plains and/or Midwest.  Obviously being 2 weeks out, it's too early to dig into in serious detail.  I guess if I'm looking for any sort of takeaway, it would be that somebody in that massive stretch of land may be dealing with issues.

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There could be millions of people disappointed with this eclipse, just because millions of people will try to see it. Overall, I think MO/KY/TN might get an average of about 20% to 40% chance of cloudiness at any given moment in late August. In the Mountain West, climatologically there's a very good chance of seeing the sun at 11:00AM in places like Wyoming.

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Less than 10 days away now.  Now is when I'll be checking almost every individual run to get an idea on trends.

The 00z ECMWF cloud output product had about 10-30% cloud coverage in most of MO-IL-KY path at 1 pm on the 21st.  The 6z GFS is less favorable, though even the Euro could be a concern if something is in the wrong place in those couple minutes.

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1 hour ago, cyclone77 said:

00z Euro showing a fat MCS rolling right into my target area for the eclipse around noon lol.  Sure hope it's wrong, but if it isn't will have to head into Nebraska.  Clouds/rain in areas along the path will only act to make things even more crowded in areas that will be sunny.

That seems a lot different than previous run.

I read somewhere that they are considering reversing/making traffic all one way on some roads if there's a situation where it's cloudy somewhere and there's a last minute exodus of people toward a sunny location... not unlike a hurricane evacuation situation.  This is not a life or death thing though so I wonder if that would actually occur.

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Here's the AFD from LSX this afternoon.

Area Forecast Discussion
National Weather Service Saint Louis MO
336 PM CDT Tue Aug 15 2017

[snip]

.DISCUSSION FOR TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE...
(Monday August 21st)

The trend over the past 24 hours in medium-range NWP guidance is for
the mid/upper level ridge across the southern CONUS to continue to
build a bit northward through the day on Monday. This is a good
trend for prospective viewers of the total solar eclipse passing
through early Monday afternoon. Have lowered PoPs and sky cover a
bit from yesterday`s forecast as the better chance of thunderstorms
will be tied to the northern periphery of the ridge across the mid-
Missouri Valley eastward toward the lower Great Lakes. However, some
opaque cirrus blowoff from these storms to the north may be
possible. In addition, there are numerous other mechanisms for the
formation of clouds, many of which are very difficult to discern
past 36-48 hours. That being said, current synoptic pattern
forecast for Monday afternoon does look supportive of a partly
cloudy to mostly sunny sky, with the most likely types of
potential clouds being the aforementioned high-level cirrus
blowoff from thunderstorms to the north/northwest of the area as
well as diurnal cumulus. However, past total solar eclipses have
noted that the cooling induced by the eclipse itself helps to
reduce diurnal cumulus. Speaking of cooling, it certainly will be
interesting to see exactly how much air temperatures are affected
from the beginning to end of the eclipse. Attempted to add some
detail in hourly temperatures by cooling readings several degrees
nearest to totality (1800 UTC/100 PM) and 1-3 degrees in the hour
immediately before and after during the partial phase of the
eclipse. Actual temperatures nearest totality between ~1810 and
~1820 UTC will likely dip 5-15 degrees more, at least briefly.

 

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1 hour ago, Hoosier said:

The amount of meteorological data that's going to be gathered during this is just tremendous, especially with the ability to view 5 minute obs (and even shorter time scales).

Absolutely. This is will likely be the most studied eclipse ever. I'm kind of curious what GOES-16 will show. Will we be able to make out the umbra shadow? Also, modeling is showing a pretty unstable airmass for much of the path so it'll be interesting to see what effect it has on cloud patterns and obviously the temperature too. One obscure research topic is the "eclipse bow wave" which is a form of gravity wave that lags the shadow by 15-30 minute and ripples out at several hundred mph. Will we be able to see these with GOES-16?

 

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21 minutes ago, bdgwx said:

Absolutely. This is will likely be the most studied eclipse ever. I'm kind of curious what GOES-16 will show. Will we be able to make out the umbra shadow? Also, modeling is showing a pretty unstable airmass for much of the path so it'll be interesting to see what effect it has on cloud patterns and obviously the temperature too. One obscure research topic is the "eclipse bow wave" which is a form of gravity wave that lags the shadow by 15-30 minute and ripples out at several hundred mph. Will we be able to see these with GOES-16?

 

I think one of the MODIS passes should cross the path of totality.

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4 hours ago, bdgwx said:

Absolutely. This is will likely be the most studied eclipse ever. I'm kind of curious what GOES-16 will show. Will we be able to make out the umbra shadow? Also, modeling is showing a pretty unstable airmass for much of the path so it'll be interesting to see what effect it has on cloud patterns and obviously the temperature too. One obscure research topic is the "eclipse bow wave" which is a form of gravity wave that lags the shadow by 15-30 minute and ripples out at several hundred mph. Will we be able to see these with GOES-16?

 

With zero knowledge on the subject I would think the visible passes of the country on Konday would easily show the shadow of the moon....that would be a great loop to archive

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On the day of the eclipse, the Kentucky Mesonet will be recording and bringing back data from all 68 stations every 3 seconds for incoming solar radiation, air temperature, wind direction, and wind speed. Additionally, there will be corresponding real-time data maps displayed on this webpage. After the eclipse, all data maps will be available online to click through to visualize what happened during the eclipse. It is expected that this will be a great dataset with significant research potential.

http://kymesonet.org/eclipse/

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On 8/15/2017 at 7:53 PM, bdgwx said:

Absolutely. This is will likely be the most studied eclipse ever. I'm kind of curious what GOES-16 will show. Will we be able to make out the umbra shadow? Also, modeling is showing a pretty unstable airmass for much of the path so it'll be interesting to see what effect it has on cloud patterns and obviously the temperature too. One obscure research topic is the "eclipse bow wave" which is a form of gravity wave that lags the shadow by 15-30 minute and ripples out at several hundred mph. Will we be able to see these with GOES-16?

 

 

19 hours ago, ice1972 said:

With zero knowledge on the subject I would think the visible passes of the country on Konday would easily show the shadow of the moon....that would be a great loop to archive

 

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