Originally Posted by
psychtobe
is it crazy to buy tickets to DFW now?
we have family in Arlington so don't need a hotel. right now roundtrip flights from PDX are about $450, leaving at 4:30 pm on 4/8. that doesn't seem terrible.
I might hold a rental car but doubt we'll need one.
My thought is to have family drop us off at DFW at about 7 am if not earlier. hopefully they can avoid traffic that way. And just watch from the DFW parking lots on the second floor. After the eclipse we can just hang out in the AC til our flight (or have lunch).
When we did the 2017 eclipse we could drive to it (about 1 hour, lucky us). The traffic before was medium bad. The traffic after was horrible. If you got on the road almost exactly as the eclipse ended you were ok, otherwise people spent 2-4 hours for what was normally a one hour drive.
Any other thoughts or tips?
No eclipse experience myself, but I'd assume the worst traffic happens when a major city is outside the totality band, but within ~100 miles or so of totality. That puts a ton of people on the road. That's what Oregon had in 2017.
This one, with the whole Metroplex getting 2+ minutes of totality, I'd expect most folks will just watch from their own part of town. (Assuming uniform weather in the area). Some diehards will journey east or south of town towards the max areas, so traffic from those spots back to the city will be heavy. I-20, I-35, I-45, US-80, US-175. But I wouldn't expect the traffic to be too bad for the interior of the metro, say, west of 635 north of 20.
Post-eclipse flights may be full, so allow extra time for security, etc.