Two months and counting toward another Great American Eclipse

As of this Thursday, it'll be two months and counting until the second "Great American" solar eclipse in seven years passes across our region.

Just like last time, locations in western Kentucky and southern Illinois are planning to host thousands of visitors, while even more will travel through the rest of Kentucky toward other destinations to the north.

Using the 2017 eclipse as a model, the creator of the website Great American Eclipse dot com estimates that one to four million Americans will travel to experience totality from Texas to Maine. The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet estimates that up to a million will pass through the commonwealth as they travel to viewing spots in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.

The eclipse will impact eight Kentucky counties and clip portions of four others. The totality phase will enter Kentucky around 2 p.m. in parts of Fulton and Hickman counties before sweeping across Ballard, McCracken, Livingston, Crittenden, Union and Henderson along the Ohio River. It will also clip small portions of Carlisle, Graves, Webster, and Daviess counties.

Totality in Kentucky will range from just over three minutes in Wickliffe and Bandana, to a minute and a half in Cunningham and downtown Paducah, to less than thirty seconds in Smithland and Marion. Southern Illinois locations like Carbondale, Herrin and West Frankfort will get more than four minutes of totality along the center line of the eclipse's path.

The rest of the country—even those standing just a few miles from the edges of the path of totality—will not experience darkness in the day or be able to look at the sun’s corona with the naked eye.

Traffic on our main roads will build gradually a few days before the event, but the experience of 2017 tells us that the real crush of traffic will occur on the 8th, immediately after the eclipse passes through and everyone tries to return home at the same time. Seven years ago, thousands of drivers were gridlocked for hours trying to head from the lakes back east toward Louisville and Cincinnati.

The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet is working with Kentucky Emergency Management, Kentucky State Police and local emergency agencies on event impacts, including the potential traffic issues that may arise as hundreds of thousands of travelers head back to the south on April 8th.



(AP file photo Mark Humphrey)

On the Net:

Map of eclipse path and time of totality for each community