Eclipse Success in Western Australia

Tony Crocker

Tony Crocker

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Just a quick report from today. Liz and I are on the Coral Discoverer cruise April 14-24. It is run by Paul Maley, who has been doing eclipse trips for 50 years including Liz' first in Turkey in 1999. We were given the option to view from the small uninhabited Ah Chong Island, 20.525S, 115.543E, which 15 of us did while the other 50+ remained on the ship. It has been fairly windy so viewing and photography were more stable on the island. Eliot Herman took these pics, which illustrate the highlights of this eclipse well.

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The eclipse was a short 64 seconds,which means the Moon and Sun are close in apparent diameter. That's why the red chromosphere is visible for about the lower third of the circumference in the left pic. We are currently near solar sunspot maximum, which means the corona is more symmetric as shown in the right pic vs. elongated at solar minimum eclipses like 2017. There are more solar flares/prominences at solar max as on the left side of the left pic. Some smaller ones emerged at the top shortly before third contact.

We had 3 scuba dives on April 17-18 but probably will only have swimming and snorkeling at remaining island stops. Late this afternoon we visited Alpha Island, the site of Britain's second atomic test of 93 kilotons in 1956.
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Tony Crocker said:
The eclipse was a short 64 seconds
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That is, of course, a long way to go for 64 seconds!

If I recall the 2024 eclipse is much longer at 3-4+ minutes for most areas near the centerline (longer than the 2017 US one too). I need to start looking into logistics for that I guess (probably san antonio or something like that as a guess). Less than a year to go and, for me at least, worth it to travel within the continental US/Canada, probably not more than that for me though.
 
There are about 70 customers on the cruise. 3 couples didn’t make it: two of them had positive COVID tests and the other was scared of the category 4 hurricane that made landfall about 500km SW of our departure port Broome and 700 km NE of Exmouth on the day we arrived in Broome.

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Broome was extremely humid but the area of the eclipse farther SW near Exmouth gets only 9 inches of rain per year. We have had some rough seas and the first dive spot Rowley Shoals was cancelled because it took a direct hit from the hurricane.

Short eclipses have more edge effects like the chromosphere in the left pic. We are gone 3 weeks this time and as usual will find many other interesting places to visit.
 
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Tony Crocker said:
category 4 hurricane
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Sorry to be a pedant. Hurricanes have anti clockwise winds while our cyclones in the southern hemisphere have clockwise winds.
I’m sure you won’t mind my being pedantic as I’ve come to the conclusion you have the same persuasion.🙂
 
These tropical storms are all the same phenomenon. The names are not by hemisphere but by regional practice, to which I probably should have conformed. They are cyclones in the Indian Ocean, including in the northern hemisphere Bay of Bengal, typhoons in the western Pacific and hurricanes off both coasts of North America. I chose the term "hurricane" because FTO is mainly a US audience.

The clockwise winds resulted in winds south of the cyclone being easterly from the desert out to sea.
 
Tony Crocker said:
These tropical storms are all the same phenomenon. The names are not by hemisphere but by regional practice, to which I probably should have conformed. They are cyclones in the Indian Ocean, including in the northern hemisphere Bay of Bengal, typhoons in the western Pacific and hurricanes off both coasts of North America. I chose the term "hurricane" because FTO is mainly a US audience.

The clockwise winds resulted in winds south of the cyclone being easterly from the desert out to sea.
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I was only stirring. We call them cyclones on the east coast of Oz too.
Interestingly cyclones never result in the visible ‘twister’ type thing that is common in the mid western US. I don’t know why that is. I guess they’re a different type weather system.
 
Tornadoes are a different phenomenon. If they occur over water, they are called waterspouts. But the central USA climate produces tornadoes at a far higher frequency and intensity than anywhere else in the world. The main area runs SW to NE from northern Texas to Indiana mainly in April/May. A secondary area to the SE (Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee) gets them mostly in February/March.

I should also mention that some of the midwesterners call tornadoes cyclones, which is perhaps the reason I avoid the term to avoid confusion.
 
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There were green flashes at sunset visible by some people on the ship for 6 consecutive nights.
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One of the passengers has had a lot of practice photographing green flashes and the one above was from April 22.
 
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Harvey’s territory (Gore, Catskills, Killington) is short of totality. He will need to go farther north to Whiteface.

Whiteface’s weather odds are marginally better than Vermont’s but still pretty bad. But this year was clear in the Northeast part of the path while Texas was mostly clouded out.

The bottom line is that no place on the US path has much over 50% climate odds, so the best strategy is watch the forecasts 2-3 days ahead and use the Interstate highways to chase the best forecast. Some people on SEML are planning to base in southern Illinois and prepare to drive as far as Lake Ontario or south Texas if necessary.
 
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Tony Crocker said:
Harvey’s territory (Gore, Catskills, Killington) is short of totality. He will need to go farther north to Whiteface.
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How precise are the maps showing the expected totality path? Maybe another five-star eclipse cruise (on Lake Erie or Ontario) is in the cards for you and Liz.
 
The eclipse maps are very precise except the northern and southern limits are a bit fuzzy due to the jagged surface of the Moon. In general viewers should go for close to centerline for maximum totality unless a last minute weather call indicates otherwise.

Our Iron Blosam friends the Meisners are vacation club members at El Cid resorts, who have 4 hotels in Mazatlan. Public reservations became available in early March so we did that. I expect we have a group of 25+ people.

For mobility there is a toll road continuously in the path over the mountains to Durango which we are considering anyway due to its high point at 8,800 feet.

The eclipse is on a Monday, so people in the US have the weekend to drive to someplace favored by weather forecasts.

I would advise easterners not to book lodging near the northern New England ski areas in advance. East-west roads are slow and tedious up there if you need to relocate. Stay farther south, say Albany, then use the Interstates to drive to where weather looks best. That would include I-90 west to Rochester or Buffalo and beyond if north looks poor for weather.

If I were going to the Northeast, Plan A would be the top of a ski area. Plan B would be a plane ticket away from the Northeast.
 
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Interesting perspectives in there.

I was thinking plane ticket to San Antonio with likely some of the highest odds in the US for weather in western Texas, but it might be best to fly to Dallas with a plan to drive as far south as San Antonio or well into Arkansas depending on weather forecasts that day...
 
Trip leader Paul Maley has assembled this set of pictures from our cruise.

We have learned that cruises set their priorities and other objectives may not be realized. The Paul Gauguin in 2019 seemed to prioritize its port call itinerary and so took extra risk with the eclipse weather and lost.

The Damai II in 2016 was a dedicated scuba dive liveaboard, clearly prioritized the diving over the eclipse, even the diving scheduled for the afternoon after the morning eclipse but fortunately the weather cooperated.

This Coral Discoverer cruise prioritized our landing site on the small uninhabited Ah Chong Island. The ship had to remain within pickup range of us on land but was constrained by oil rig and conservation exclusion zones to a small area with high winds and 7 seconds less totality. In his briefings Paul strongly encouraged the island but nonetheless 50 out of 65 passengers remained on the ship. At least nobody had concerns about clouds with a squeaky clean weather forecast in a desert environment.

The diving/snorkeling was low priority on this cruise. It's unfortunate that Rowley Shoals was trashed by Cyclone Ilsa, but we were perhaps half a day's distance from the world renowned Ningaloo Reef but did not go there due to scouting of Ah Chong Island before the eclipse and the logistics of returning to Broome after the eclipse. Our excursion landing craft also had some problems with bad gas and needed on-the-fly repairs a couple of times.
 
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