When April 8’s solar eclipse arrives, more than 42 million North Americans living under the path of totality, as well as uncounted millions nearby, will be watching the weather forecast for the prospects of a cloud-free sky. However, those skies could pose a challenge: April is a month that struggles to get out from under the clouds as winter reluctantly gives way to spring.
Useful forecasts can’t be made much more than a week ahead, but satellite-based observations of cloud coverage beginning in 1979 provide climate data that point to the best prospects for sunshine.
The path of this eclipse spans climates ranging from dry subtropical deserts to snowy spring forests. For the mobile eclipse seeker, the best advice is to go south, where summer weather is most advanced: Mexico and Texas. In April, the average cloud cover along the eclipse track ranges from roughly 20 percent over the Mexican Plateau around Torreón to more than 85 percent in parts of Quebec and in Newfoundland. (Cloud cover, or cloud amount, is the fraction of the sky covered by clouds.)
In the U.S., cloud amounts along the center line range from 48 to 58 percent from Texas through Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri before climbing into the 70 and 80 percent range as the track crosses the Great Lakes and moves into Canada and the northeastern U.S. Fortunately, it’s not all gloomy news, as there are oases of sunshine in the northern states and Canada that offer modest promises of clear weather on eclipse day.
