With two sons living in the path of totality for the 2024 solar eclipse, we had very convenient accommodations and parking in Rochester, NY for the long-anticipated event. Too bad the weather covered the sun’s tracks!
But the trip was not wasted by any means! Our whole family was able to gather for a couple of days of fun togetherness.
The weather the day before the eclipse was crystal clear, and we immersed ourselves on the very blue edges of Lake Ontario. We were even treated to a superior mirage of the distant lake’s surface appearing above the horizon. Looking like an ethereal highway bridge, the apparition spanned a good portion of the northern vista. (A superior mirage appears when the air below the line of sight is colder than the air above it. Light rays passing through that difference in atmospheric density are bent downward, so the image appears above the actual object.) My poor-quality photo was produced from my zoomed-out handheld iphone camera.
Back at our youngest son’s house, the spring peepers were in full voice in a very picturesque pond.
Eclipse day enticed us to Rochester’s Cobb’s Hill Park with a few thousand others who assembled downslope from its hilltop water reservoir. Knowing that the high cirrus that greeted us in the morning would likely thicken and lower by the afternoon’s celestial meet-up, I must say we managed our expectations well. There was a bit of a holiday festival air about the crowd, despite the looking-up let-down.
At 4:09 pm, just as predicted, totality, totally hidden above a thick deck of stratocumulus, plunged our dim world into darkness. Despite not seeing the disks of the sun and moon, it was just as thrilling!
In commemoration of the special event, son Andrew created a limited edition patch on his embroidery machine: for when the sun and the moon and the clouds and the family aligned in New York in 2024.
