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Small U.S. towns brace for rare solar eclipse, and crowds, in August

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    Small U.S. towns brace for rare solar eclipse, and crowds, in August

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    https://www.yahoo.com/news/small-u-t...100522401.html


    Small U.S. towns brace for rare solar eclipse, and crowds, in August


    Reuters
    By Ann Saphir
    ReutersJuly 18, 2017


    Books and a cardboard cutout representation of the moon eclipsing the sun on August 21, 2017 are seen at a bookstore in Jackson, Wyoming, U.S. July 12, 2017. REUTERS/Ann Saphir
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    By Ann Saphir


    DRIGGS, Idaho (Reuters) - Hyrum Johnson, mayor of the tiny city of Driggs, Idaho, expects some craziness in his one-stoplight town next month when the moon passes in front of the sun for the first total solar eclipse in the lower 48 U.S. states since 1979.


    The town of 1,600 people in Teton County, just west of the jagged peaks of the Rocky Mountains Teton Range, is getting poised to receive as many as 100,000 visitors on Aug. 21 for the celestial event, said Johnson, who was both excited and worried.


    Driggs is one of hundreds of towns and cities along a 70-mile arc, stretching from Oregon to South Carolina, that are in the direct path of the moon's shadow. The full eclipse and the sun's corona around the disk of the moon will be visible for a little more than two minutes only to those within this narrow band.


    Driggs and other towns like it are scrambling to prepare for the onslaught of curious visitors.


    "We expect gridlock," Johnson, 46, said as he drove his pickup truck through town.


    Tucked amid seed potato and quinoa farms, Driggs normally enjoys a more languid pace of life, with highlights including $5 lime shakes sold on balmy summer days at the corner drug store. But with the impending eclipse, planning has kicked into high gear.


    To make sure nothing more than the roads will be clogged, Johnson took shipment this month of two massive generators that can be deployed at key spots along the city's sewage system to keep it flowing in case of a power outage.


    "We are telling our residents to hunker down," Johnson said.


    And while Johnson would have preferred to have taken his family backpacking during the time of the eclipse, he's planning to stay in town in case anything goes wrong.


    'ALL HANDS ON DECK'


    Over on the east side of the Teton Range, authorities are preparing for the day "kind of like a fire," said Denise Germann, a public information officer at Grand Teton National Park. Estimating crowds is nearly impossible, she said, but "it is an 'all hands on deck' event."


    The 480-square-mile park's campsites are completely booked, and it expects visitors to pour in from all over, including the bigger Yellowstone National Park, just north of the path of totality. Grand Teton will waive its $30 entry fee to keep traffic from backing up.


    Many of the park's 465 summer staff will be posted at trailheads and along roads to warn visitors to brace themselves for failed cellphone service, jammed roads and scarce parking, and to urge them to carry plenty of food and water, as well as bear spray to ward off wildlife.


    In nearby Moose, Huntley Dornan said the county had warned business owners like him to expect four times the usual number of customers in the days leading up to the eclipse.


    "I find that hard to believe, but I'm not going to be the guy who has his head in the sand and didn't plan for it," said Dornan, who runs a restaurant, deli, gas station and wine shop, the last place to get supplies before entering the park from the south.


    Dornan plans to park a 48-foot refrigerated trailer stocked with a couple of thousand pounds of pizza cheese, 150 pounds of ground buffalo meat, a few hundred tomatoes, and gallons of ice cream, among other provisions for the expected hordes of tourists.


    On eclipse day, only people who paid as much as $100 each to attend his viewing parties will be allowed access to the narrow road on his property that offers a clear view. Security will keep others out.


    About 14 miles down the highway, in Jackson, Wyoming, Bobbie Reppa expects the family business to be flush with demand. She and her husband run Macy's Services, the only purveyor of portable toilets for miles. The 50 she normally has on hand simply aren't enough.


    "We'll be bringing them in from as far as Ogden, Utah," she said.


    (Editing by Ben Klayman and Bernadette Baum)
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    Re: Small U.S. towns brace for rare solar eclipse, and crowds, in August

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/americans...071154168.html


    'A primal experience': Americans dazzled by solar eclipse
    Associated Press MARCIA DUNN,Associated Press 9 minutes ago



    Total solar eclipse crosses U.S., captivating millions
    Scroll back up to restore default view.
    The stars came out in the middle of the day, zoo animals ran in agitated circles, crickets chirped, birds fell silent and a chilly darkness settled upon the land Monday as the U.S. witnessed its first full-blown, coast-to-coast solar eclipse since World War I.


    Millions of Americans gazed in wonder at the cosmic spectacle, with the best seats along the so-called path of totality that raced 2,600 miles (4,200 kilometers) across the continent from Oregon to South Carolina.


    "It was a very primal experience," Julie Vigeland, of Portland, Oregon, said after she was moved to tears by the sight of the sun reduced to a silvery ring of light in Salem.


    It took 90 minutes for the shadow of the moon to travel across the country. Along that path, the moon blotted out the midday sun for about two wondrous minutes at any one place, eliciting oohs, aahs, whoops and shouts from people gathered in stadiums, parks and backyards.


    It was, by all accounts, the most-observed and most-photographed eclipse in history, documented by satellites and high-altitude balloons and watched on Earth through telescopes, cameras and cardboard-frame protective eyeglasses.


    In Boise, Idaho, where the sun was more than 99 percent blocked, the street lights flicked on briefly, while in Nashville, Tennessee, people craned their necks at the sky and knocked back longneck beers at Nudie's Honky Tonk bar.


    Passengers aboard a cruise ship in the Caribbean watched it unfold as Bonnie Tyler sang her 1983 hit "Total Eclipse of the Heart."


    Several minor-league baseball teams — one of them, the Columbia Fireflies, outfitted for the day in glow-in-the-dark jerseys — briefly suspended play.


    At the White House, despite all the warnings from experts about the risk of eye damage, President Donald Trump took off his eclipse glasses and looked directly at the sun.


    The path of totality, where the sun was 100 percent obscured by the moon, was just 60 to 70 miles (96 to 113 kilometers) wide. But the rest of North America was treated to a partial eclipse, as were Central America and the upper reaches of South America.


    Skies were clear along most of the route, to the relief of those who feared cloud cover would spoil the moment.


    "Oh, God, oh, that was amazing," said Joe Dellinger, a Houston man who set up a telescope on the Capitol lawn in Jefferson City, Missouri. "That was better than any photo."


    For the youngest observers, it seemed like magic.


    "It's really, really, really, really awesome," said 9-year-old Cami Smith as she gazed at the fully eclipsed sun in Beverly Beach, Oregon.


    NASA reported 4.4 million people were watching its TV coverage midway through the eclipse, the biggest livestream event in the space agency's history.


    "It can be religious. It makes you feel insignificant, like you're just a speck in the whole scheme of things," said veteran eclipse-watcher Mike O'Leary of San Diego, who set up his camera along with among hundreds of other amateur astronomers in Casper, Wyoming.


    John Hays drove up from Bishop, California, for the total eclipse in Salem, Oregon, and said the experience will stay with him forever.


    "That silvery ring is so hypnotic and mesmerizing, it does remind you of wizardry or like magic," he said.


    More than one parent was amazed to see teenagers actually look up from their cellphones.


    Patrick Schueck, a construction company president from Little Rock, Arkansas, brought his 10-year-old twin daughters Ava and Hayden to Bald Knob Cross of Peace in Alto Pass, Illinois, a more than 100-foot cross atop a mountain. Schueck said at first his girls weren't very interested in the eclipse. One sat looking at her iPhone.


    "Quickly that changed," he said. "It went from them being aloof to being in total amazement." Schueck called it a chance to "do something with my daughters that they'll remember for the rest of their lives."


    Astronomers, too, were giddy with excitement.


    NASA solar physicist Alex Young said the last time earthlings had a connection like this to the heavens was during man's first flight to the moon, on Apollo 8 in 1968. The first, famous Earthrise photo came from that mission and, like this eclipse, showed us "we are part of something bigger."


    NASA's acting administrator, Robert Lightfoot, watched with delight from a plane flying over the Oregon coast and joked about the space-agency official next to him, "I'm about to fight this man for a window seat."


    Hoping to learn more about the sun's composition and the mysterious solar wind, NASA and other scientists watched and analyzed it all from the ground and the sky, including aboard the International Space Station.


    Citizen scientists monitored animal and plant behavior as day turned into twilight. About 7,000 people streamed into the Nashville Zoo just to see the animals' reaction and noticed how they got noisier at it got darker.


    The giraffes started running around crazily in circles when darkness fell, and the flamingos huddled together, though zookeepers aid it wasn't clear whether it was the eclipse or the noisy, cheering crowd that spooked them.


    "I didn't expect to get so emotionally caught up with it. I literally had chill bumps," said zoo volunteer Stephan Foust.


    In Charleston, South Carolina, the eclipse's last stop in the U.S., college junior Allie Stern, 20, said: "It was amazing. It looked like a banana peel, like a glowing banana peel which is kind of hard to describe and imagine but it was super cool."


    After the celestial spectacle, eclipse-watchers heading home in Tennessee and Wyoming spent hours stuck in traffic jams. In Kentucky, two women watching the eclipse while standing on a sidewalk were struck by a car, and one has died, authorities said.


    The Earth, moon and sun line up perfectly every one to three years, briefly turning day into night for a sliver of the planet. But these sights normally are in no man's land, like the vast Pacific or Earth's poles. This is the first eclipse of the social media era to pass through such a heavily populated area.


    The last coast-to-coast total eclipse in the U.S. was in 1918, when Woodrow Wilson was president. The last total solar eclipse in the U.S. was in 1979, but only five states in the Northwest experienced total darkness.


    The next total eclipse in the U.S. will be in 2024. The next coast-to-coast one will not be until 2045.


    ___


    Associated Press writers Gillian Flaccus and Andrew Selsky in Salem, Oregon; Peter Banda in Casper, Wyoming; Caryn Rousseau in Chicago; Seth Borenstein in Nashville, Tennessee; Johnny Clark in Charleston, South Carolina; and Beth Harpaz in Madisonville, Tennessee, contributed to this report.


    Last edited by Singularity; 08-22-2017 at 05:41 AM.
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    Re: Small U.S. towns brace for rare solar eclipse, and crowds, in August

    Double post.
    Last edited by Singularity; 08-22-2017 at 05:42 AM.
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    Re: Small U.S. towns brace for rare solar eclipse, and crowds, in August

    I saw it using solar eclipse sunglasses at my university campus.
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