I'm pretty stoked for the eclipse, personally.

I remember back in 1994, I was living in Keene, NH. That spring there was a partial eclipse. It was kinda cool because I was working next door to an autobody repair shop, and they had tons of welder's masks. With those, you could scope the view of the sun through it. The sun was somewhere around 65% covered, so not the whole thing. It was still super cool though.

Sun eclipse
robschwankhuizen
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Fast forward tot the one just a few years ago... For that one I didn't have a welder's mask, but I did stack up like 4 black drum heads and it did a pretty good job. Obviously I didn't stare too long because, you know... the sun. But next spring here in Maine, were in the catbird seat for a total eclipse that's been the talk of the town for a while now.

The total eclipse will happen on April 8th, 2024.

The middle chunk of Maine is in the direct path of the the eclipse when it comes around. Millinocket specifically seems to be the epicenter of the action, with some people referring to the event as "Millinock-alypse". I think there's a missed opportunity to call it the "Millinock-a-clipse". But that's just me. I like dumb things.

Father and daughter looking at clouds
XiXinXing
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At it's peak, the sun will basically be rendered invisible as the moon passes in front of it. Of course, it's not like it turns to night time, but it gets a little spooky for sure. It'll look especially spooky if Mother Nature decides not to cooperate. Imagine a cloudy, rainy day that just gets inexplicably dark in the middle?

The Old Farmer's Almanac has some info about next spring's weather.

The Old Farmer's Almanac, which you can purchase right here, has an overall 80% accuracy with it's long range forecasts. So while it's obviously impossible to predict exactly what the forecast will be, they can kind of dial it in the zip code. Overall, TOFA is predicting that April could feature slightly above normal temps, with a trend towards lower precipitation than normal.

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That means it's quite possible that Mother Nature will play nice when the eclipse happens, so that we can all get a solid view of the action. Lord knows we've missed out on all kinds of killer meteor showers and other celestial events, because the weather sucked. Let's just wish for good things to happen next spring.

Maybe you could catch some of these if you intend to hit the road next year...

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