Beth McCarley Film, Photo, & Travels: Solar Eclipse 2012

Having just arrived back in town two days earlier, I was unsure rather I wanted to make the full drive down to New Mexico again for the solar eclipse. Denver would still be able to see a partial, but the total would have to be viewed from New Mexico. Thankfully, the weather was in our favor and the day before turned into a stormchasing day, and the plan was we could just stop in New Mexico for the eclipse on the way home.

Eclipsed sun setting behind the windmills

Verne Carlson picked us up at 6am on May 19th. We followed an early morning thunderstorm out east and worked our way down to Kit Carson, where we intercepted a storm with 1 and 1/4 inch hail. I thought this must be some of the largest hail I've ever seen, but Verne and Eric keep saying 'just wait until you see baseball sized hail!'

Falling hail, those poor cars without Rhino lining!

We can safely say this was indeed 1-1/4 inch hail

We didn't see a lot else the rest of the day other than some moderately interesting clouds. When we got down to Oklahoma there was a promising storm (which later produced tornadoes) just North back over Kansas border. Didn't go for it since we thought it wouldn't produce a tornado until it was much farther away, and wanted to stay close to Amarillo for the eclipse, which we all considered to be the more important target. The storms farther South didn't do a lot. Enjoyed a Texas Roadhouse dinner after arriving in Amarillo and helping out with maintenance on the house.

Mammatus clouds in western Oklahoma

Early afternoon on Sunday the 20th we headed from Amarillo to Vaughn, New Mexico. Drove down to the exact center line the eclipse would cross, then headed back North just a bit for a better location. Found a great spot off the road with distant windmills, the only problem was the occasional train that would pass right in front of us! Thankfully there were only a few and they didn't interfere when we really needed to see the sun. Eric and Verne set up a telescope projected onto paper so we could safely watch the progress and stream it live to the web.

Projecting the sun onto paper

Eric enjoys safe viewing

The eclipse started at 6:23 pm, and totality was 7:33 to 7:38. We only had one cloud block our view for a few minutes just as it was starting, and otherwise had perfectly clear skies. I was really surprised by the 3D effect of the moon. The edges of it had light bleeding over the curvature rather than appearing as a flat black disc. We left just as soon as the sun set and got back home around 1:30am.