Posted by Joe on Saturday, April 6
First, I’ll answer a few questions I received since yesterday’s update…
- What about XXX city, town, village, etc? Every location in the Tuscarawas Valley area will experience a partial solar eclipse Monday afternoon. The degree of how much the moon covers the sun will vary depending on your exact geographical location. In the Dover/New Philadelphia area, for example, the moon will cover approximately 99.20% (maximum coverage) of the sun’s surface at 3:15 pm on Monday. No location in Tuscarawas County will be able to view a total (100% coverage) solar eclipse.
- What time does this happen? The whole eclipse process takes several hours. It will begin in the Dover/New Philadelphia area at 1:58 pm. This is the time when the moon first touches the SW limb of the sun.
So we’re about 48 hours away from Monday’s solar eclipse. Here is my latest discussion on how I think our local weather and cloud conditions will unfold.
LOCAL WEATHER ON MONDAY
Sprinkles or light showers associated with a warm front will be moving through east-central Ohio after midnight Sunday night. These will likely linger through early Monday and should be east of our area around or just after lunchtime.
Temperatures will be mild behind the front. Afternoon highs in the New Phila area will get to around 70°. The forecast as of Saturday indicates dry weather during the afternoon. The question then becomes that of cloud cover. This is a pretty tough question to answer even with this being just 48 hours away.
Odds are the skies over our area will not be clear and pristine. Chances favor we will have clouds around but the type of clouds will also have a big impact. So in this update, I’ll use one of our short-term high-resolution models – the North American Model or NAM3k.
The image below is a four-panel projected cloud cover solution from the NAM for 2:00 pm Monday. The panels show how cloud cover may look at 2:00 pm. The first three panels display clouds at the low, high, and mid-range levels. The last panel, bottom right, depicts the total cloud cover.
Upper and mid-level clouds are mainly those thin cirrus clouds we see on bright days. These are made mostly of ice and any of those will likely cause no visibility problems. Low-level clouds, however, can be problematic. Those are usually thicker and more opaque than upper-level clouds due to the amount of moisture they contain. As the NAM indicates above, there can be some low-level cumulus clouds around – maybe as much as 50% coverage.
Should this indeed be the case, being able to view the eclipse at maximum will depend on how many cumulus will be bunched up over your head at exactly the right time. And, to some degree, how thick those clouds might be.
The National Weather Service operates a computer model named The National Blend of Models (NBM). This program ingests data from all of the major models, averages the results, and spits out a blend of all those model runs. The result for Monday afternoon is not looking very promising.
TODAY’S BOTTOM LINE
Clouds are likely to be around during Monday’s solar eclipse in our area. The degree of cloudiness continues to be a big question even this late in the game. The location of the warm front that lifts through the region early in the day will play an important role. Depending on where this boundary is located at eclipse time will determine the level of cloudiness. Should this boundary lift far enough north to allow for a more southerly flow, clouds would likely thin out more.
There is still plenty of uncertainty here as the timing of the warm front an hour or two either way could make a big difference. Low-level clouds will gradually clear as the boundary departs the region through the afternoon and evening.
It won’t be perfect viewing but hang in there and hope for the best.
I’ll do another update late afternoon Sunday as new data comes in. Maybe by then, we’ll have a better handle on where that warm front actually ends up Monday afternoon.
Thanks for the details. Appreciate your hard work!