All I’d recommend is picking your spot, get there early, and leave well after totality. Most people will get back in the car right after totality ends. Stay put for another few hours and hopefully traffic calms down.
Tomer’s eclipse city dashboard shows 77% of ensemble members have “favorable” or “somewhat favorable” conditions for eclipse viewing west of Austin. Despite the NBM showing 65-80% cloud cover. So maybe that implies just thin cirrus?? That’s what I’m hoping for at this point. I’ll definitely take the under on just about any prediction of convective cloud cover around the totality path. As I recall from 2017, only the hrrr actually accounted for the reduction in insolation? And it made a visible difference in cumulus coverage.
TX and the Ohio area seem like a zero sum game. Improvement for one means worse weather for the other. Slower progression and a weaker system of that initial low increases cloud and shower chances for TX it seems.
0z ops look workable? GGEM has clear skies for the eclipse verbatim! Looks like a band of showers moves through Sunday at some point but most of Monday is dry right now. 0z GFS actually has the scenario I was rooting for with the energy more consolidated in the storm that moves into the Plains on Sunday and nothing hanging behind.
p.s. NBM cloud map from Pivotal is the best I’ve seen it yet!
@MN Transplant I think you’re right for TX. Based on my experience in 2017, the reduced solar will suppress convection for 2-3 hours centered on totality. Cumulus field totally dissipated in South Carolina in 2017 when I was there and reformed after.
Still seems like best case for TX is for the storm/trough to be more consolidated and push through with force Sunday and clear behind on Monday. Trend on guidance though is for another shortwave to dump into the trough and get stuck near the 4 corners area.
Somewhat positive start to the 12z suite with gfs and GGEM ops both again weakening and slowing the western trough. Keeps TX dry although verbatim there’s still clouds.
^disaster
Starting to get pretty worried.
trend is for that western trough to be weaker and slower. I was hoping it would actually be faster and clear TX before Monday. But that doesn’t look like it’s happening. So I think I need to continue to root for weaker and slower and hope it doesn’t start pulling moisture into TX until Tuesday or after.