Clouds Set to Play Spoiler
Tomorrow is finally the day, but unfortunately, the eclipse may be hard to see in the Finger Lakes.
Aras of cloudiness in both the upper and mid levels of the atmosphere will be moving into the Finger Lakes Monday morning as a cold front approaches. During the eclipse time in the mid-afternoon, many of these clouds will remain in place.
Now, it will not be like the overcast, gloomy weather we had pretty much all of last week. The clouds may still allow some visibility of the eclipse due to the thinner, at times semi-transparent nature of these clouds. There may also be the occasional break in the cloud cover that improves visibility further.
But there are no two ways about it… viewing conditions will not be optimal. I tried to match the picture I used for the blog header image as best as I could to what I envision the clouds looking like tomorrow.
The nearest clear skies in the path of totality will likely be out ahead of these clouds in Vermont, or even better, New Hampshire or Maine.
To the west, cloud cover is less certain, but western Ohio and eastern Indiana will be the closest decent opportunity for clearer skies.
If you are planning to travel outside of the Finger Lakes and immediately surrounding areas, I would highly recommend using the National Weather Service forecasts as your guiding principles. Go to weather.gov and click on the map in the area you are interested in. Each weather service office homepage will almost certainly have eclipse and cloud cover information highlighted on their pages.
I will not be able to assist with specifics outside of our region beyond what I have described above and will not be overly available for questions today at all. All the information I have to give, I have provided in this post.
Keep in mind the key point that I expressed on Friday: “How the clouds and clearing are distributed during the key minutes of the eclipse is not possible to tell [at this point] and may not become clear until the eclipse is approaching on Monday. Such is the nature of trying to predict individual clouds at very specific times and locations.”
I will have my normal Monday morning blog post where I will discuss any further updates for our region and go over the weather for the rest of next week as usual.
Happy eclipse hunting!
Lori
The photo is super useful! Thank you!
Gail B. Dalmat
Thank you so much for this! Happy eclipse hunting to you, too!