Originally Posted by
songsc
Moving this conversation to the lounge thread.
My original plan was to take a flight along the eclipse belt during the eclipse so that I wouldn't worry about cloud. Then I soon realized that the delay and flight plan were much more difficult to predict than weather.
I never considered Niagara Falls, because I knew it would be crowded. I considered the southern edge of the Niagara Peninsula, and the north shore of Lake Erie in general, anywhere from Chatham-Kent to Fort Erie. Lots of open fields and not many people would go to places like Pelee Island or Port Colborne. Then I once I found out the weather wouldn't be ideal for Southern Ontario, I decided to go to Quebec. My current plan is staying in Montreal and move to either Sherbrooke or somewhere between Cornwall and Kingston on April 8. The traffic will likely be pretty bad on the Champlain Bridge and Jacques-Cartier Bridge, but I doubt many people will be using the Mercier Bridge or the A30 bridge, not to mention the ferry to Sorel-Tracy.
I'm sure very few had the Northeast in their eclipse watching pool! If we could've predicted that, we would've planned to be on skis in the Townships or in Vermont. But as it is, we've shifted from Texas to Montreal, staying in the city within walking distance of all of the public events.
Ninety seconds at the edge of totality with models still showing clear skies, beats a gamble with high traffic of 4 minutes for us.
We were caught in the post-eclipse traffic in 2017 despite waiting hours after the event to get on the move. In the 2017, we were very close to the centre-line which only had a maximum of 2 and a half minutes then. We found that plenty to enjoy the spectacle. And then hit up our astrophotographer friends for their photos