Sunday Evening Vermont Eclipse Forecast: Trending Cloudier

St. Albans Bay. Vermont, around 3:30 pm. today, just 24 hours
before the eclipse. Would have been nice if it happened
today instead of tomorrow, when high clouds will
very likely make the view of the event somewhat fuzzy.

 Today would have been a great day for an eclipse, huh? 

Morning clouds quickly scoured out to reveal a blue bird day. It was a fine spring day close to Lake Champlain, where the snow had disappeared, and a gorgeous late winter day where the snow remained. 

Of course, this being Vermont, you can never have the weather you want, when you want. 

Forecasts keep trending cloudier for the hours around the eclipse on Monday.  By cloudier, I definitely don't mean to say the eclipse will be a no-show.

You will still see a spectacle, but it won't be a crystal clear view like you would have gotten today. Monday will start off cloud-free, but you'll see more and more of those high clouds as the late morning and afternoon progress. 

The clouds Monday afternoon still look to be high and thin, so most of us in Vermont should still sort of see the sun disappear behind the moon. The darkness that takes over will still be really cool. Those high clouds will also probably make some interesting colors and features in the sky.  

It's VERY important to note the thin clouds will not protect your eyes at all. You MUST wear those special eclipse glasses if you're looking up at the sun and following the progress of the eclipse. You can take the glasses off only during the total eclipse, when the sun is completely hidden. 

Horizontal visibility will remain excellent at eclipse time.   No fog, no haze, no wildfire smoke. So you'll see how the eclipse affects distant mountains, lakes and clouds as it progresses. During the total eclipse, you'll see a little light in the distance, in places where the eclipse already passed, or is yet to hit.  

Bottom line: The increasingly cloudy forecast is by no means a complete disappointment. Not even close. 

A low overcast with fog would have been exponentially worse than the expected conditions Monday afternoon. Had we gotten that low overcast and mist,  a dark dreary day would have just gotten much darker for a little while. Yawn. 

So we're still doing well.

The National Weather Service in South Burlington noted that they had to adjust forecast high temperatures downward under and near the path of the eclipse.   Highs in the valleys without the eclipse tomorrow would probably have been in the 60 to 65 degree range.

But the timing of the eclipse - more or less around the time of peak heating - means meteorologists had to trim back expected highs to between 55 and 60.  Tomorrow will probably not be the warmest day so far this spring because of the eclipse.   

I'm sure we'll get over that "disappointment." Temperatures will also probably fall by at least five or six degrees during the eclipse, then partially recover afterwards. 

Hopefully the cloud forecast won't get much worse. I don't think it will. The high clouds will be caused by a dying warm front approaching from the southwest. An active or sharpening warm front would have thrown even more clouds our way. 

So all in all, we're still doing pretty well with this thing in Vermont.