Weather Thou Goest: Tracking the Skies

[Deleted]

Jun 20, 2017 15:35:13 GMT -4 azaleaqueen said:

Well I'm on the Gulf Coast and hurricane season has begun. Tropical Storm Cindy is in the Gulf and the whole coast will be under flood watches and warnings for the next few days. Not supposed to bring a lot of wind though. Thank goodness.

We are headed to a state softball tournament in Birmingham and I am obsessively checking the weather. James Spann is my man.

[americanchai]

I think we have to be on month 2 of Florida-like pop-up, on-off thunderstorms every single day/night. I left my car windows cracked because it was expected to be hot today but I don't know why I didn't think that we might have a pop-up thunderstorm (raging outside as I type). My car has had a musty, funky smell for a while (relatively new car, bought in September). This will not help matters one iota. Nor will the umbrella and raincoat that are both in my car in the parking lot about half a mile away. Oh joy.

ETA: The mosquitoes are becoming as large as hummingbirds. I bought a bug zapper this past week for my backyard which is particularly bad with the buggers and I can tell you the ones that get stuck in there are ginormous (gross). It has brought the population down considerably. The daily rain and high humidity has made it impossible to spray deadly chemicals to kill them so this was the next best thing.

[smitten]

So, am I buying into some sort of hysteria by being nervous about the eclipse and my 6 year old? They sent home a permission slip to make sure we knew that the 1st grade class will watch it and the kids will be provided with NASA approved solar glasses. I called his eye doctor, and she said that as long as they were NASA approved, it was fine to wear them over his regular glasses.

How are the teachers going to make sure the entire school of kids doesn't peek around their glasses? I remember the last time there was a partial eclipse in the 80s, and we had to make the pinhole viewers, and turn our *backs* to the sun to be safe. The encouragement to actually watch it through glasses feels off to me.

[divasahm]

I think our district gave up on trying to figure out how to do the eclipse thing with the elementary kids. They're going to watch on TV and discuss in class, but parents are welcome to pull their kids out and take them outside to witness it themselves. I know that the high schoolers are actually having a first-day-of-school/eclipse pep rally assembly in the football stadium with district-provided glasses and the band, cheerleaders, and dance team involved, and I think the middle schoolers have something similar, if lower-key, scheduled as well.

[Ginger]

There is a little bit of hysteria going on. Today I was told people are keeping their pets indoors in case they look up. My dog NEVER looks up at the sky and he hasn't been watching daily eclipse coverage on tv so I don't think he's going to be tempted.

I remember looking directly at the partial eclipse when I was a kid. No glasses or pinhole viewer. My vision is fine. I'm not advocating that. I'm going to have both eclipse glasses and iso binoculars, but I think the hype needs to be tempered a bit.

[Oxynia]

Yes, the ground's in tip top condition and I think we can expect some first-rate eclipsing this morning.

Monty Python will never not be funny to me.

[Deleted]

I have a basset hound. I am not sure he could lift his head up high enough to stare directly at the sun!

[chonies]

My dog thinks any moment off the sofa is an injustice. I guess she'll watch a live stream.

Seriously, though--I haven't yet read a satisfactory explanation about why looking at the eclipse through dark lenses for a few seconds is worse than driving west at 5 or 6 PM, or any of the other intense times of sun exposure.

[Karlene]

Aug 19, 2017 14:02:20 GMT -4 chonies said:

My dog thinks any moment off the sofa is an injustice. I guess she'll watch a live stream.

Seriously, though--I haven't yet read a satisfactory explanation about why looking at the eclipse through dark lenses for a few seconds is worse than driving west at 5 or 6 PM, or any of the other intense times of sun exposure.

It's because normally when it's super bright out and you're staring at the sun, your pupils shrink to pinpoints. But it'll be dark(er) during the eclipse, so your pupils will be widened letting in more light allowing for the damage.

[chonies]

But isn't there less light because the sun is blocked out and it's darker?

I feel really stupid asking this, but nothing has made a lot of sense. And not in the "science is magic" way, either. The pupil thing is totally reasonable and makes sense, but then articles say things like this:

And in a nutshell, solar eclipses are dangerous because the sun can come out from behind the moon and "surprise you" before you have a chance to look away.

Uh? Like, the sun is animated and just pops out? Will it have jazz hands, or just scream SURPRISE!!! ?