Posted by Joe on Friday, April 5
While the Tuscarawas Valley area is not within the path of totality for Monday’s solar eclipse, many of us will be watching from home, work, and school nonetheless. We’re still 4 days out and, to be honest, there is still a lot of disagreement between the modeling concerning the amount of cloud cover that might be in play on Monday afternoon.
In the next few updates, I’ll simply show you what I’m looking at as far as the modeling goes and give a brief assessment of what we might expect as far as clouds and weather are concerned for our local area.
As of today (Friday), I’m confident that skies will not be pristine over our area on Monday. There is a high probability we’ll have some clouds around but odds (a one in five chance) don’t favor it being overcast either.
Temperatures will be mild across the area on Monday with afternoon highs in the mid to upper-60s. And, there can be light rain showers around especially early in the morning. The eclipse will occur during the afternoon when the odds of rain will be lower – not zero, but a 10% to 20% chance as of today’s outlook.
If we were to take ALL of the computer weather models available today this discussion would take forever to make. Luckily, we have a tool at our disposal known as the National Blend of Models or NBM. The NBM ingests data from the Big Three weather models (The European, American GFS, and Canadian ensemble forecasts) and produces a pretty good snapshot of what might play out. In this example, we’re focused on cloud cover shown as a percentage.
Using the NBM as a guide, cloud cover in our area is predicted to run in the 45% to 55% range during the eclipse on Monday. That’s not perfect but it’s acceptable for most casual observers.
Another factor to consider is the type of clouds we can expect. High, thin cirrus clouds would be more favorable than lower thicker clouds. With the morning run, western Ohio appears to be the more favorable spot.
The pattern indicates that the cloud type will not be cumulus but more likely to be semi-transparent upper-level cirrus or mid-level altostratus clouds.
So what’s my take on all this? I think there is a zero chance we’ll have clear skies for Monday’s eclipse. There will be clouds around but at this point I don’t think they will make viewing the eclipse impossible. There will be times when clouds might temporarily block our view but we’ll still have plenty of opportunities to see this marvel play out through the afternoon.
Reliable cloud forecasts are not particularly easy even within 12 – 24 hours let alone days away. Forecasts change because, well, air has a tendency to move around a lot. Add to the fact that our atmosphere consists of several layers of air all at different temperatures and moving in different directions makes it almost impossible to say where clouds will move through any location.
Thank goodness we have a collection of powerful tools that will at least give us some general guidance.
Thanks for reading today’s update. Have a great weekend.
