Can you imagine spending a fortune on a trip to emptied Spain to enjoy a show that will only last a couple of minutes and when the moment of truth arrives the clouds will prevent you from seeing it? That will be what will happen this summer if we are unlucky enough that the skies in the totality zones of the August 12 eclipse become cloudy.
Unfortunately, until 3 or 4 days before we will not know what will happen. Weather predictions cannot be made any further in advance, what more would we like. However, you can do an analysis of what has happened in previous years, right in that place and on that date of the year. The meteorologist Benito Fuentes has been in charge of doing it and we can see the results on his X account (formerly Twitter).
30 years of observations. The meteorologist has analyzed what happened on August 12 at 8:00 p.m. in the Spanish skies over the last 30 years. Although totality of this year’s eclipse will be reached around 8:30 p.m., the eclipse itself will begin at 7:30 p.m. That’s why he chose 8:00 p.m. The bad thing is that in your analysis you can see that in some of the points of the totality strip, half of August 12 have had too many clouds to be able to see an eclipse with peace of mind.
Not all clouds are the same. The meteorologist has paid special attention to the medium and low clouds, since the high ones allow light to pass through, so that it could be seen when the eclipse “turns it off.”
Just a little cloudy skies. Another important fact that the meteorologist clarifies is that, due to the time at which the eclipse will take place, quite close to sunset, a few poorly positioned clouds are enough to ruin the show. It is not necessary for the skies to be completely cloudy. He has used 35% cloud cover as a threshold from which to start worrying.
Not all positions are equal. Precisely also because of the time close to sunset, the clouds that would spoil the eclipse are those that are towards the west, where the sun sets. A few clouds to the west would be much worse than a completely closed sky above our heads.
Don’t panic. These data are not a prediction, far from it. Just because half of the August twelfths have been problematically cloudy in the last 30 years does not mean that this year will be cloudy as well.
With the predictions that can be made in the previous days, it will be possible to recalculate to a certain extent the place to observe the eclipse. It’s not worth worrying ahead of time. That little bit of mystery and uncertainty also makes what is to come very interesting. And the good thing is that, if we can’t see it, we can always go hunting for the other two components of the Iberian trio of eclipses.
Image | Magnific/NASA
In | A third of Spain will be completely dark for a minute or two. The astronomical event of the century is approaching
