The View of the Eclipse in Cloudy Austin
Reading Time: 3 minutesAbsolute Weather Chaos Threatened to Ruin Everyone’s Texas Eclipse Experience, The weather in Texas was bad. It was still magical., Texas eclipse: The clouds didn’t ruin the experience.
The previous total solar eclipse in Austin, where I live, was almost 627 years ago, and the city’s crowds reflected that energy. Hotels were booked, flight prices were seriously hiked, and the city felt all weekend as it does during SXSW, which is to say congested. Too much traffic. Hard to find a table for brunch. Tourists posing among Texas bluebonnets.
A full 1 million people planned to travel to—and within—Texas in order to be in the path of totality, according to the state’s Department of Transportation. Of course, the universe didn’t cooperate. Weather reports were grim, and the Texas Eclipse Festival canceled its events and asked attendees to leave early due to the chance of ‘high winds, tornadic activity, large hail and thunderstorms.’ Chani Nicholas—New York Times bestselling author, astrologer, app creator, and activist—said that such chaos was cosmic. She gave her whole company the week off, citing the planets. ‘During this time period, life is especially unpredictable and unstable,’ she wrote. Changes, transformations, and catalysts were ‘written in the stars.’
On my street, the weather was calm and cloudy.
‘If you really want to be outside,’ a lady on TikTok told her viewers, ‘choose your timeline, choose your path, and choose it with confidence.’ So, when my calendar event pinged at 1 p.m.—’eclipse!’ tucked in the rest of the workday—I shut my laptop, grabbed my eclipse glasses, and walked outside. I pulled up a seat next to my pink rose bush while my dog chased the squirrels in my backyard as if it were any other day.
Within 10 minutes, the ambient light grew dimmer. Adults gathered in my street, on the other side of the fence. The neighborhood was still filled with the sound of young children playing. I heard a man in his yard explaining to his family, ‘Well, there’s cloud cover,’ and looked up at the shrouds and puffs floating over the shrinking, glowing crescent. Whenever the clouds parted, there was echoed clapping and sparse shouts of ‘There it is!’ Today the sun was a celebrity.
Several Native American cultures, including the Navajo, advise still reflection on days like today. ‘The Navajo do not eat and drink or do any activity during the event; we just sit in reverence,’ Sherene Goatson Ing, a member of the Navajo Nation and director of the First Nations Educational and Cultural Center at Indiana University Bloomington, has said. ‘Because it’s a moment of rebirth, we just try to show respect.’
I put my coffee mug back inside the house, just in case. My dog looked at me quizzically. The birds were still chirping.
By 1:27, there was just a sliver of sun between the fresh leaves on my pecan tree. The air, which was warm and heavy, got cooler and quieter.
Three minutes later, some of the solar lights in my backyard flickered on. Then came the streetlights. Early afternoon, but the aura of sunset. Smells of spring: freshly cut grass, roses in bloom, the flowers on my lemon tree. The mailman in my neighborhood pulled over and got out of his car.
In the sky, the sun looked like a diamond on an engagement ring. One or two spots of red shone from around the black disk of the moon. Then, totality. The sun was completely blocked out, and people cheered in every direction as the sky darkened. Clouds covered the sky. Owls hooted. The clouds once again parted. My neighbors gasped. Austinites whooped and clapped, even screamed.
Not two minutes later, it’s day again. On a Monday afternoon in April, we are reborn.
Ref: slate
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