Pennyrile, I-69 'A Parking Lot' After Eclipse

It turns out that after the eclipse, lots of travel headaches did develop -- but not here.

The immediate Paducah area seemed to have avoided long lines of traffic before and after the event, but the perimeter of the region like Madisonville, Princeton, and the eclipse hotspots of Hopkinsville and Carbondale all saw their share of backups.

Monday afternoon shortly after totality, the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet reported a "major backup" at the intersection of I-69 and the Pennyrile Parkway in Hopkins County. Crowds heading north out of Hopkinsville and Clarksville met up with skywatchers heading east from Paducah, Princeton and the lakes area. 

By 6:30 pm, KYTC said Pennyrile Parkway was "a parking lot" that was backed up for about ten miles. They reported that emergency responders took to the medians on ATVs to hand out bottles of water to the hot, stranded drivers.

Even by 9 pm, drivers on I-69 in Hopkins County were calling traffic authorities to find out why they were at a dead stop on the interstate.

Traffic flow back to the east corresponded with anecdotal accounts that large numbers of visitors at local organized events were from locations like Ohio, Michigan, Delaware, New Jersey, Long Island and as far as Maine.

During the peak of the eclipse, the I-24 welcome center at the Kentucky-Tennessee state line had to be closed because it was full. It reopened almost immediately after totality.

On Sunday before the eclipse, popular sites in the Shawnee National Forest of southern Illinois had to be closed when they were inundated by cars. Forest rangers declared it was a dangerous situation because they would not be able to get emergency equipment into those areas where many sightseers had parked their vehicles right on the narrow roadways and walked into the forest. 

Significantly, many of the cities and major retail areas along the shadow's path noted just normal to light traffic for much of the eclipse weekend, possibly due to local residents "hunkering down" at home to avoid the possibility of being stuck on the highways with the eclipse trekkers.

Nationally along the eclipse path, traffic was generally not a problem before the event, but was an epic mess Monday afternoon. People leaving the Carbondale area Monday afternoon jammed I-57 and I-55 all the way to Chicago, with some trips taking 15 hours instead of the usual five.

Atlanta, St. Louis, Kansas City and even rural Oregon experienced similar standstill conditions Monday afternoon.