Totality 2017: A Life-Changing Experience

Monday’s solar eclipse was the most breathtaking natural event I’ve ever witnessed in my life. The transition from light to dark was frighteningly fast, and I was dumbfounded by the beauty and extent of the sun’s corona at totality. I was so taken aback by the experience and everything happened so fast that my memory is mostly a blur, but I’ll never forget looking up at the sun, seeing the corona’s tendrils spread throughout the sky, and having my mind completely and utterly blown.

As I mentioned in my eclipse blog leading up to this event, I first learned about this eclipse way back in 8th grade, when my science teacher, Mr. Pearsall, gave us a handout on the “Great American Eclipse” of 2017 and encouraged us to plan well ahead so that we could witness this extraordinary event. I had originally planned to go to Pacific City to watch it with my folks, but with models consistently showing low clouds across much of the coast, I messaged Andrew Greenlaugh-Johnson, a “Facebook weather friend” who I’d only met in cyberspace, about camping on his property in the Cascade foothills, approximately 10 miles SE of Silverton and directly in the path of totality. Andrew happily volunteered a spot for both me and my friend Mikko Johnson, who came down from Seattle to see this cosmic event.

We left Portland around 8 pm Sunday night and made it to Andrew’s place at approximately 9:30 pm. To my pleasant surprise, the first face I see there is that of Yevgeniy “Yev” Kostenko, another “Facebook weather friend” (Portland in particular has a very vibrant Facebook weather community). Yev was joined by his friend Derek and Derek’s sister Ruby, and they already had tents set up right next to us. After Mikko pitched our tent and I helped by shining a flashlight on the instructions, we all spent the rest of the night counting stars, talking about weather, reflecting on life’s mysteries, and looking forward to the total eclipse ahead.

The ground we slept on is the type of ground that really makes you appreciate a box spring/mattress, but we managed to get a decent night sleep nonetheless, with owls providing auditory entertainment between our spurts of unconsciousness. We woke up at 8:30 AM and were treated to a fantastic and very filling breakfast by Andrew and his fiancee Jackie, and met some other folks from California who had rented out a room from Andrew/Jackie’s house to view the eclipse.

The partial eclipse began at 9:05 in the morning while we were eating breakfast, and I was incredibly relieved to don my eclipse glasses and actually see part of the moon eclipsing the sun. Maybe it’s just a meteorologist thing, but given how many times our weather forecasts have gone awry, there was an irrational part of me that was skeptical that the eclipse would even occur. I was relieved to know that the astronomers did their math right!

As the sun became more and more eclipsed by the moon, we all decided to head around a mile north towards some open farmland to get a better view of the eclipse. We probably got there around 9:35 or so (I’m kicking myself for not taking more detailed notes of the experience!), and had a grand ol’ time conversing with other eclipse chasers from across the country, watching the sun become more and more obscured by the moon as we chatted.

The temperature began to drop and the light began to dim, but everything was relatively gradual – it was amazing how much light remained when we were only a minute from totality. But when totality was less than 20 seconds away, the sky underwent an unbelievably fast transformation from day to night. It was an immensely powerful experience to see the entire world darken before your very eyes. Back in foggy Pacific City, my mother documented just how abrupt this shift was (and the emotions that came with it!). This was taken at 10:17 AM.

Totality occurred from approximately 10:18 to 10:20 at our location, and to be completely honest with you, much of it is still a blur for me. Far from being a conscientious observer of a law of nature, I paced around like a kidnergartner doing a potty dance, with some primordial grunts added for auditory effect. Mikko and I paid tribute to Seattle’s grunge scene and sang Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” during the waning moments of totality. Mikko also borrowed a super nice DSLR camera from his roommate and took some outstanding photographs of the eclipse.

The sun’s corona was more expansive and beautiful than I could have ever imagined. I had imagined the corona would simply be a symmetrical “plasma doughnut,” but there were three huge “tendrils” of the solar wind that extended far beyond the main corona. Seeing these jets of energy radiating across the sky gave me an affection for the sun I had never had before – how kind of it to do all that work just to allow organisms like me and you to thrive. Thanks sun!

We were also fortunate enough to see solar prominences peeking just beyond the moon’s shadow. Prominences are loops in the sun’s photosphere (outermost surface) that follow the sun’s magnetic field lines hundreds of thousands of miles into the corona. These prominences were visible to us red highlights on the surface of the sun. The image below is a composite image of various exposures from 1/8s up to 1/800s, with each exposure colorized differently, and you can see several prominences, with a particularly large one in the top right.

Yevgeniy took a video of totality back in our neck of the woods. Even though the corona itself was extremely bright, we could still see a few planets/stars in the dusky sky.

Dan Chen, one of the folks who was staying at Jackie/Andrew’s house, took an incredible panorama shot of the entire scene.

We saw the famous “diamond ring” as the sun reappeared from behind the moon, and within a few minutes, it was bright enough that the stars and planets were no longer visible.

After totality, we searched for the eerie crescent-shaped shadows under nearby trees. My friend Smoky took a great video of these shadows shimmering against against her porch back here in Portland.

After the eclipse, we all had lunch and tried to digest what we just saw, and then we packed up and began a very slow and traffic-filled drive home.

This eclipse was truly the experience of a lifetime, and was more overwhelming than anything I could have possibly imagined. You’ll have to wait until 2169 for the next total solar eclipse over Washington and Oregon, but the next total solar eclipse east of the Rockies occurs on April 8, 2024. It’s not too early to begin planning to see it!

Looking ahead, I’m keeping a very close eye on Hurricane Harvey in the Gulf, which will likely be the first major hurricane to hit the U.S. since Wilma made landfall in Southern Florida as a category 3 storm on October 24, 2005. The primary concern from this storm is extreme flooding, as it is expected to stall near the Corpus Christi area for several days. I don’t know if I’ll have time to get another blog out today but I will definitely have one tomorrow.