I just booked an award ticket DAL-SFO departing April 8th evening. Still deciding whether to arrive Sat, Sun, or Mon morning. Arriving on the weekend have the advantage of being able to move around to catch the best weather, big downside having to pay for hotel, prices are already through the roof. :td:

Our local NBC station posted a story about the eclipse yesterday. I like the map at the bottom with dots of where you'll get the full effect:
https://www.kxan.com/news/texas/how-...last-in-texas/

You can also put in a city name in this link, and you'll find out how long it will last in different locations:
https://eclipse2024.org/eclipse_cities/total/tx

Note that in cities like Waco, that will get 4+ minutes of total eclipse, hotels and other places to stay (such as Airbnb) have extreme rates, if they even have availability. A Hampton Inn-type property is going for $2-3000/night.
If you want to experience the eclipse, but don't mind missing ~30 seconds, my suggestion would be to book something in Georgetown. The last I checked, rates were still mostly normal.

Perhaps we can convince wakesetter93 to take his boat out on one of the lakes during the totality :)

recently cnn had a story talking about hotel bookings along thr route.

because the total eclipse in the afternoon instead of early morning folks who want to see it could stay some where outside the totality zone and turn drive and enter it. For e ample a place like Memphis you can drive 55 north or 40 west to get into it or other routes in between.

thr other questions….what airlines intentionally schedules flights. You can fly out of Dallas on American or southwest to CLEVRLAND or Buffalo is fly inside totality.

I booked a hotel in the Addison area. Hotels east of the Metroplex are pricey, but in the city, there are still plenty of affordable options. We can decide later whether to watch near the hotel (3.5 minutes), or whether to try to drive east for an extra 30 seconds.

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.

The problem with eclipse chasing is clouds. It could be that Dallas in April 2024 is slightly cloudy and if you drive just 30 minutes south you will be able to see the sun. Sounds like you are coming from far away specially to see this eclipse, which I totally respect!. If I were coming from far away and did not know how to drive, for a place like Dallas, I would either learn to drive and get a driver license before coming to Texas, or I would hire a car and driver for the day.

I live in central Ohio, one of the most overcast places in the US. I have a flight to AUS and a hotel but no flight home yet and rental cars are $270 for 2 days. I'm hoping the forcast for Cleveland is clear so I can stay close to home.

I have witnessed two total eclipses of the sun. Perhaps these articles that I wrote for my blog might help to give some ideas on preparing to see a total eclipse of the sun:

• Everything You Do Not Want to Know About Trying to View a Total Solar Eclipse
• Photographs of the Total Eclipse of the Sun
• Chasing Another Total Solar Eclipse 2019
• The Total Eclipse of the Sun Chile July 2019: A Poor Video of a Great Celestial Event

I’ve done multiple eclipses…..

I went to grand Teton for 2017. I’ve done the park many times so I was there just to see it and knew where I would go.

I got in their the day before, did a night there, then fro e to SLC hotel for a flight home the next day.

the day before I got to Teton from sun valley, ID. Driving east from idaho falls I saw a bunch of people set up random camping spots Ive drive this route before. I stayed at the motel 6 just south of jackson core.

I left my hotel before sunrise. The traffic was a crawl out of jackson up to gros venture eherr it let up some. Police were controlling traffic. The place I wanted to go the ranger was about to not let me in there but I could go. Some peop,e were st schwahbacker landing for first sunlight and left. When I got there there was about 30 of us who were there to view the eclipse. A few had telescopes.

Shortly after the total eclipse ended, I headed out needingbto drive to SLC.

the main toad out was a crawl going the route of jackson to Evanston. Traffic was bad to Alpine then it started going a little faster but had a string of vehicles inn the one lane each way road. Other than stops for quick food/ gas I got to SLC about an hr before sunset.

a friend of mine snd his family travelled out to Portland. His wife has a brother there. They went to a location in the mountains for the eclipse but had to move due to the local wildfires away from the wildfire smoke/ haze.

traffic away from totality is going to be crazy all over. In the east, unlike western US you have just more road options you can take.

While that may have been arguably true for my experience with the 2017 total solar eclipse in the United States, that was not true for my experience with the 2019 total solar eclipse in Chile, as no other viable road options existed.

Lesson to be learned: expect at least triple the usual traffic time when driving away from totality — regardless of where you are...

...but my logic was that getting to the site of the total solar eclipse was far more important than leaving. I did not really care how much time leaving took — as long as my experience was successful.

my brother could stay at his house and see it. The issues see the areas just outside wanting to get inside.

you will be inside totality at DFW, DAL, IND, CLE, BUF, and ROC airports.

my hometown is BUF. Friends of mine live away from the lakes if you have more near lake clouds but interior clearing.

part of it…try to stay at the area for the nights around the eclipse.not have to drive on the day of. Traffic will be crazy from areas like Louisville/ Cincinnati/ Chicago where folks drive to get inside. Toronto is just outside but east of Hamilton us inside so that traffic will be bad.

Interesting. Cleveland is the opposite, fewer clouds near the lake. At least that what's the cloud/eclipse forecasters say. Crossing my fingers for home (I live on Lake Erie) but backup hotels in Arkansas and Texas.

it’s wind driven based on strength and direction.