As it turned out in our end of the planet, and over such the moon is just the sun at night, the solar eclipse during midday here was eclipsed by something else in the sky — and the evening’s bands also may have been thus eclipsed — with it coming and going and more one level than the other: Cloud cover(s). Nothing to sing about.
It was even more thick, than a brick, than usual, with a few rather brief interludes in-between where the sun started poking its rays through and then withdrew, and even then it was gray beyond partly cloudy and only shown in small and late-seen horizontal layers. The sun was not as one, only in spots, and is it a coincidence that pollen counts were through-the-roof high. But wait, that was a couple of days later, but maybe the “seeds” of the sun’s love were being sown, as soon as it reappeared.
– Spring tornados make a need for sirens, but to further the point, eclipses? Both could be seen as a warning …
There to keep us at bay, were today not one but two such sirens (they were loud but not the sultry kind) slated to go off, mere hours apart. What is this the day of the WWII air raids? At least, for now, there were not big bombers obscuring the view of the sun and moon and stars.
And take note, the day all this was blowing in the wind was an 11th. And as a weather-caster said, how loud the siren is depends on how far your home is from said siren. OK, I think we could have figured that out. But if you are too far away, you won’t hear it if you are inside. So just how much use are they? Or just stay outside most of the time. Grill not sit at the table with your family, as there’s the added benefit that you won’t be that close to them.
Say, within earshot? –
This type of eclipse only comes every few decades. So can’t the weather gods cut us some slack and take their clouds elsewhere for a day? In this April of spring, one that has likely seen more rain than any other annum in that time period.
Anyway, coverage of the sun, as we saw it here, was supposed to start at noon and go to either 3 or 4 p.m. That depended on who you wanted to talk to, as they began sucking it up if only slowly, and gathering in a local apartment building that serves elderly and disabled, just before the lunch hour.
They were said to have 75 percent sun coverage on my west end of Wisconsin, fading away further with each passing mile, and view at a full 100 percent via the really coolest cable. But some people said with exclamation point, do you really wanna watch it on a screen, rather then a sky?
So there were a few residents, co-mingling close together, asking each other their questions rather than googling them, about when and would even the crescent disappear. One was especially persistent, in part because I didn’t hear her right, (I just got back from Miracle Ear and I am borderline), and thought she was saying “fun” not “sun.” But she, and others, did swear that they thought it did get a bit shadowy for a few minutes.
Some conversations, too, were as shadowy as living in a cave: You finally heard of it when? I told you on the phone, when you were bored and called around brunch-time, Happy Solar Eclipse! And you didn’t think there was more to my comment then earlier, discussing multiple times with you, those damned sun spots. What, you didn’t know? I joked that there’s been so much attention given to the event by media, social and traditional, that the sun couldn’t field any more requests for interviews, didn’t handle the stress and took a vacation and/or mental health day.
Turns out that the old, way back song was right, “drove to Nova Scotia for a total eclipse of the sun.” I hope that most of those throngs in that area had sunshine, just before the eclipse started, and not cloudy or stormy weather.