It's hard to believe that the total solar eclipse over our area is just TWO days away! People from across the country will flood to our area to witness this astronomical event. The big question will be...what will the cloud cover look like? After all, the entire viewing will rely on how much cloud cover there is because if there's a lot, we wouldn't see a thing. So...what is the data showing?
First off, I want to say that forecasting cloud cover is extremely difficult, especially for a small area, for a small time frame, 2 days out. With that being said, take this data with a grain of salt because it will change in some capacity by Monday afternoon.
The night before the eclipse, showers and storms will be rolling through our area. Why is this important? Well, this brings cloud cover, but the question is, how long will that linger into Monday?
You can tell by Monday morning data does show mostly cloudy skies for the start of the day. As we progress through the morning, you will notice data has that cloud cover thinning out & by the afternoon, leaving us with high clouds over our area.
Ensemble data is also showing a little bit of cloud cover left over for the solar eclipse. This map below shows cloud cover (0-100%) averaged across dozens of weather model simulations within the ensemble at 2:00 PM EDT on April 8, near the time of totality. Brighter blue indicates greater cloud cover (worse visibility) in the simulations.
You can see over KY and Southern IN, the ensemble still shows 40%-50% or so cloud cover over our skies.
The next question is..how thick will the leftover cloud cover be, even if it's just high clouds left over? That is something we will dive more into over the next 24-36 hours as we get closer to the actual eclipse event. Viewing can still be decent with high clouds, but it will all boil down to how thick those higher-level clouds are, and if any more breaks in remaining clouds happen.
Stay up to date with WDRB Weather as we continue to watch the cloud cover potential and its changes over the next day and a half!
