COLUMBUS – Millions of spectators along a narrow corridor stretching from Mexico to the U.S. to Canada eagerly await Monday’s celestial sensation — a total eclipse of the sun — even as forecasters called for clouds.
What you need to know about today’s eclipse
While Ohio is among 15 states in the path of totality, almost everyone in North America was guaranteed at least a partial eclipse, weather permitting.
“Cloud cover is one of the trickier things to forecast,” National Weather Service meteorologist Alexa Maines explained at Cleveland’s Great Lakes Science Center on Sunday. “At the very least, it won’t snow.”
The weather service on Sunday evening was predicting that any cloud cover in central Ohio would be “somewhat transparent.”
Gov. Mike DeWine activated the Ohio Emergency Operations Center Sunday, to help communities navigate any issues that arise from an expected influx of as many as a half million visitors who will join the state’s permanent residents, crowding roadways, stores, hotels and campgrounds for the event.
Starting just after 3:00 p.m. in Columbus, the moon was due to slip right in front of the sun, entirely blocking it for up to 4 minutes, 28 seconds.
The resulting twilight, with only the sun’s outer atmosphere or corona visible, would be long enough for birds and other animals to fall silent, and for planets, stars and maybe even a comet to pop out.
It will take just 1 hour, 40 minutes for the moon’s shadow to race more than 4,000 miles across the continent.
Eye protection is needed with proper eclipse glasses and filters to look at the sun, except when it ducks completely out of sight during an eclipse.