Hoth

You’ll quickly learn Oklahoma severe and CT severe are not remotely similar.

Hail!

Kaboom!

Ha, I probably should’ve remembered that, as both events produced tors in my town.

When was the last time we had a 10% tor prob in NE? I think there was one around 2010 or so that wound up busting badly due to dogshit lapse rates around 5C. Anyway, looks interesting tomorrow. Should be some solid bangers for sure.

That was one soppy 12 miler. Shoes were squelching every step by the end. Dew you feel like I dew?

Time to fire up the hot tub!

Yeah getting it done early was definitely essential today.

10 miles on the books. Very sticky, but not too hot.

Agreed. Beautiful day with a nice breeze.

I don’t know what folks are complaining about. It’s spectacular today. Top 5 of the year.

What a boss! That is awesome.

Yeah, that was super cool. Hopefully we get a repeat performance tomorrow night.

I can see the aurora from i91! Light pollution dulls it big time. Need to find a dark spot

Thanks, Ryan. I'll take a drive.

Looks like some clearing north of Hartford towards Springfield. Can anyone confirm?

The FOMO is killing me right now. I lucked out with the eclipse, but feel like I might have to pay for it this go round.

Okay, thanks Will. Very helpful.

Skunked down here. Folks up 91, is it clearing out up there? Should I hop in the car?

Saw the northern lights in VT in ‘03 and it was pretty awesome. Hoping we can sneak a break in the clouds tonight. Would be great to get a repeat.

Well, it was gorgeous weather down here. Just as it was 6/1/11. Congrats for those that saw some action today! EMLFTMFW.

But there are spiders down there.

Modern is fantastic. Zuppardi's sausage pie in West Haven is outrageous as well.

Hamden tornado is my earliest weather memory.

Now that I've had twenty-four hours to reflect, time for a debrief. This whole thing felt like tracking a KU with an especially long lead time. I've been eyeing this eclipse for years and had made tentative plans to crash in Tupper Lake, NY, if the weather looked obliging--always iffy in April. For weeks I agonized over the models, despite knowing that the outputs were likely shite. But late last week it looked like high pressure would be more or less in charge, so I pulled the trigger and drove up the day before. Yesterday morning dawned clear, though a cursory review of the satellite looked a bit iffy with cirrus and denser clouds entering western NY. I went for a jog into town to observe the pre-eclipse goings-on. Tupper did a good job prepping, with designated parking and viewing areas and free bus shuttles. We even had EMS messages pushed to our phones. There were a lot of people, but I got the sense that the numbers were below initial expectations, perhaps because of the cloud forecast. And sure enough, during my jog a milky cirrus deck came across the sky. The sun was still quite visible, but not crisply defined. As the morning progressed I resigned myself to the likelihood that this would not be a perfect situation for viewing and that I could likely dispense with seeing Baily's Beads and the so-called diamond effect. This was disheartening, but I still thought the experience would be cool. I just hoped that the heavier cloud cover would hold off. Around 1:45, my hosts and I drove the gator from their camp down to their boathouse and set up chairs on the dock on the Raquette River. We cracked some brews and chatted and called to the other watch parties on neighboring docks, and to my surprise the sky started to clear. Reviewing COD, sure enough there was a narrow channel of clear sky between the cirrus canopy and the heavier clouds. Could we actually pull this thing off? The show started right on time at 2:12. A quick squint through my glasses revealed an ever so small but distinct incursion in the sun's bottom right quadrant. This progressed quickly and by 2:45 my host quipped that the sun looked like Pac Man. I don't recall exactly when we noted the temperature dropping, but it became quite palpable by 3:00, as did the general greying down and dimming of the light. The birds seemed to notice, too, as the swarm of songbirds that had been gaily assailing our ears subsided into silence. Excitement really started to mount around 3:15. It was quite chilly. I looked up and saw there was clear blue sky with beautiful fox tail clouds on the western horizon and it finally sank in that I was going to get the real deal full course eclipse experience with all the trimmings. I actually gasped, "I can't believe it. We're going to pull this thing off!" At about this point, we noticed a sudden sharp breeze kick up out of the west and run down the river. At 3:20, a peek through the glasses showed the sun was almost gone. It was quite cold and a low chroma grey had settled over the landscape. The wind slackened to utter stillness. The woods on the far bank became less distinct, just a mass of dark grey treetop silhouettes. My hosts thought it remarkable how light it still was, even with most of the sun blocked. They told me later they assumed that totality was not going to be much different. Oh how wrong that proved to be. At 3:23, I drew their attention towards to clouds to the west, which looked rather ominously dark--"like a big storm's kicking up" as my host said. At 3:24, totality set in. I didn't expect the light to change so fast. That shadow galloped over us, and with it cheers could be heard echoing down the length of the river. The sun strangely and feebly yellowed, flashed and disappeared and the black hole burst forth from its heart. This elicited general gasps, clapping, and appeals to a higher power from all in attendance, and the most awe-inspiring spectacle I've ever seen was under way. How to adequately describe it? A coal-black heart of darkness wreathed with feathers of light in a deep twilit heaven, planets tom-peeping amid thin gossamer ribbons of cirrus, a rich gold sunset along the eastern horizon where the river dumps into the lake. I was stunned into silence, while my host on the flip side seemed to be experiencing a prolonged and quite plangent orgasm of sorts, emitting sobs and a string of high-pitched "oh-my-gods" through the whole thing. We got the whole shebang. At about 7 o'clock on the moon's surface, one could see a reddish eruption from the sun, a pillar of plasma many times the size of the planet I was observing it from. Then, moments later, sparkling, sharp scintillations, shards of brilliant light ringing and magnified by the black of the moon. I don't know if this was the fabled diamond ring effect, but whatever it was it put the whole show over the top. Then, to the west, the horizon began to brighten, and just as the shadow had encroached at palpable velocity, the distant clouds brightened, and them thin cirrus wisps nearby, and just as quickly as it came, the sun burst back out and flooded us with brilliant, cold light. My host's 90+ year old parents observed the eclipse with us as well and agreed it was the most sublime three minutes of their time on this earth. I feel so fortunate to have witnessed it. I furthermore hope to catch a two-fer in Florida 2045: a totality viewed via the stadium effect of a major landfalling hurricane. Is that so much to ask?