Since you asked... No. I am conveying an 'informed speculation'. The traffic situation will be unprecedented because the areas affected are encompassing much of the interstate routes east-west, and many north-south. No one is equipped to handle it. In the extreme, if a hostile entity wished to attack us with major cyber, this event would be the one to do it. That would truly knock out much of the logistics infrastructure at a time when normal business operations are compromised by lack of personnel and roads are clogged. We would be naive to assume that has not been considered, IMO. As an astronomer I think only happy thoughts of celestial events. People? Not so much. ;-)
ive seen the eclipse in 2017 but 8 so dont really remember much this year i hope to seeit through my telescope with a solar filter
My wife's little hometown in Utah was middle of the road for the partial (annular) eclipse last year. OMG - what a mess. The desert outside of town was flooded with autos. Traffic was a mess the day before and after. To see this the surrounding desert was filled with these Many jurisdictions are activating their EOC and so on. Rock concert indeed.
The last eclipse I recall in this area was late in the afternoon, and I was on the way home from a one-week camping trip. My recollection is not even close to radio related. As I drove by there was this young gal on a farm in the middle of a pasture who was standing between two horses, holding onto the reins. The horses had their backs to the sun. Can only assume she did not want the horses staring into the sun.
Here are some indications of how many people are expected up here in the northeast. St. Johnsbury, VT 30,000; Littleton, NH 50,000; Newport,VT 30,000; Burlington,VT 100,000; Barre,VT 40,000; St. Albany,VT 60,000; Swanton,VT 80,000; Middlebury,VT 70,000; Ruthland,VT 70,000; White river junction,VT 30,000; Fairlee,VT 15,000; Bradford,VT 20,000; Bennington,VT 60,000. These figures are based on traffic on major roadways I-91,89,91 and 7. ROUTES 2,4,5,7,9,103,106,302,14,12,30,100,102 and 25 from the VERMONT STATE POLICE, AGENCY OF TRANSPORTATION, VERMONT EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT, It is predicted that most of the heavy traffic will start to show that weekend starting about Friday afternoon and the heaviest return traffic should begin later after the event and continue late Monday night. Most of the heaviest traffic should be on the interstate highways. Every available state police, county, local, us Marshall, border patrol will be on duty all the day before, during and day after.
I traveled from NYC to Festus, MO in Aug 2017 for the last total solar eclipse. It was so worth it. Scary, though, because there was cloud cover until roughly an hour before totality. Anyway, I'll never forget it. The temperature drop was a surprise. If you actually live in the path of totality and the sky is clear, consider yourself lucky!
Former Marine? I was a Zoomie at one time, but still speak fluent Grunt. *** "DELTA, Utah, Oct. 12, 2023 (Gephardt Daily) — Spectators throughout Utah will be looking skyward Saturday morning to catch a glimpse of an annular solar eclipse. The so-called “ring of fire” eclipse is expected to attract an estimated 300,000 visitors to central and southeastern Utah, according to the Utah Department of Transportation." This is many multiples of the full-time resident count. I suppose being so close to Las Vegas and Calif in general didn't help. Not everyone thinks load of tourists are a good deal - Solar eclipse threw Utah town, Navajo workforce into crisis - Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)
