It's not the darkness or eclipse being the issue. But rather the extra hundreds of thousands of motorists on the highways on the same day swarming to the same locations. Traffic congestion equals road delays, road delays equal stranded motorists who failed to plan. Influx of motorists includes congested phone lines. Rule number one about having a preparedness mindset and that is you don't wait until a disaster occurs to develop your plan. My local government has posted alerts on the highway to be prepared for the influx of motorists. I'm sure they understand as much as prepared minded hams do that, while not the "big one" we should be aware that travel will be out of the ordinary.
OK the eclipse has come and gone, any notable ham radio news? Is the world still around? Here in my area Ames Research Center had a gathering of people but no huge traffic jams. Cloud cover in morning but broke shortly before time when eclipse was 74% (max for our area). No party atmosphere like in the areas of totality.
Not sure about ham news - considering the area that was covered from Oregon to South Carolina I am sure somewhere along the way a ham helped someone; perhaps several places. Yes, there were some traffic jams and gridlock, as expected, in some areas. In others there wasn't. And, as always, time and patience cleared the traffic out after awhile. There were two women ran over by a vehicle in Kentucky, I believe. One was killed, the other injured pretty badly. Driver of the car was also injured a little. Not ham related but it happened. As has been said all along, the issue wasn't the eclipse itself but everything surrounding it. I'm sure things happened in various little towns along the path of totality that we likely won't hear about but, as expected, we came out on the other side and life goes on. In 2024 the totality path is right across the area that I live. Looking forward to that!
seems like every time there is a natural event, political event, or what ever it is, someone is out to make big bucks. like the disaster in Hattie scammers were scamming people of money. There were scammers in our town trying to sell fake eclipse glasses.
Is the a place we can post our solar Eclipse pictures, I had about an 80 or 83% coverage. I was using a solar filter for my Fuji camera. Allen: Ke8ccd
You can post them in this thread below. I think there was another but I can't find it. https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?threads/first-eclipse-photos.578551/
Drove from Colorado Springs to Kimball, NE on Sunday with my wife and stepdaughter, stayed at a friends house overnight and met my 25 year old daughter and her friend there (they drove in from Boulder). Neither of us experienced anything that would be "traffic" - clear sailing the whole way. Monday morning we all piled in my car, and drove to Scottsbluff - and the worst traffic we saw was at Starbucks: Drive further north on 71 and pulled over And that was that. Totality was AMAZING - the background in the pic above is facing west, and you could see it approach - it sky was DARK to the west then WHAM! The Sun disappeared. I didn't take any pics during the event - I cheered and jumped and hugged my family. One of the things that stood out for me was the red hazy horizons in every directions. It looked like a sunset - for 360 degrees. And looking up seeing a black hole where the Sun was is a sight. Amazing. Traffic on the way back was noticeable getting thru ScottsBluff and Kimball, but the State of Nebraska did a really good job keeping it moving. At the few intersections with a stop sign that there were, they would have an officer wave large chunks of traffic thru. Normally, it would have been a 5 1/2 hour drive back home from where we were, took about 6.5 hours due to some slowdowns in the first 50 - 100 miles or so. After that, it was "normal", speed-limit + driving all the way home. Didn't see a single accident or incident. I know some folks that didn't go due to the amount of horrible press surrounding this event, and I am really saddened by this. It seems the press likes to tell people how bad it's going to be - with snow storms around here it sounds like the world is going to end when you listen to the news. I am glad I ignored the naysayers and went - it was unlike anything I have ever experienced and will remember it for the rest of my life.
As I predicted, the traffic was unbelievable. Worst in E-Town, KY. Guess where our house was (for the eclipse)-- E-Town. Saw eclipse south of Franklin; 8 hours to E-Town via back roads. Normally 80 minutes. Google maps had people trudging down our block to get to 65 until 2 this morning. Not a cop in sight. Hams could have been a BIG help with prior planning. No cell phone probs. KV6O did a very nice description. It was truly overwhelming and disappointing that it had to end. View attachment 395502
"Solar eclipse gridlock: It was so busy in Madras, Ore., they called in the National Guard" http://www.latimes.com/science/la-s...-madras-oregon-they-1503273850-htmlstory.html
Very few problems were reported in WY or CO, other than very long travel times after the eclipse due to unprecedented traffic. Apparently almost everyone was fairly well prepared. WY DOT has estimated that a million people traveled to/from eclipse areas within WY, which has a population of only about 500K. Friends of ours took 10 hours to get back home in CO for a trip that is normally 3 hours. We left WY the next day and experienced only 20 minutes of extra travel time due to the remaining traffic.
THIS is the face of modern ham radio in a disaster setting-- Hurricane Harvey from Corpus Christi, reported on TWITTER and then storied on CNN-- "In the dark, internet out, ham radio not working. Is anybody out there? Alone trying not to be scared," Donna McClure in Corpus Christi said on Twitter as the storm made landfall.
