Witt’s End

I’ll skip over all the stories of gnashing teeth, extra high blood-pressure medicine and frayed nerves and get right to the end of the story. Here, in Northeast Ohio, we had a damned good eclipse experience on April 8, 2024. I’ve only thought about this for the past seven years, since we saw the 2017 total eclipse in Casper, Wyoming. One of the early questions most eclipse watchers have when it’s over is, “When’s the next one?” And we knew it would be in Cleveland, in April, certainly our cruelest month. The first week in April, temperatures could be 81 degrees, or 18 degrees. We could have flowers blooming or eight inches of snow. That’s what makes living here so exciting and worthwhile.

This year was super. The rain in the morning caused a lot of angst, however, by noon things were looking good. Temps escalated to more than 70 degrees with high-level wispy clouds. Friends from New Mexico, with whom we had shared the Wyoming eclipse experience, had arrived a few days earlier. Neighbors started arriving about 1 p.m. ’cause they knew the old guy with all the telescopes would be locked and loaded for the 3 p.m. show.

Even though those high clouds stuck around, we got the whole show from first bite to last. Baily’s Beads, when the sun peeks through the irregular surface of the moon, were spectacular.

The Diamond Ring, when the sun gets serious about moving out of the moon’s shadow, could not have been better.

And, of course totality was a totally awesome experience.

Can’t wait for the next one coming to North America in 2045.