TUPPER LAKE — One year from Saturday, April 8, darkness will cover Tupper Lake. The sun will be blotted out. The temperature will suddenly drop. The wind will pick up. Wildlife will begin acting strangely. And Adirondack Sky Center & Observatory Board President Seth McGowan believes there will be thousands of people here to witness the strange event.

It won’t be the apocalypse. It will be a total solar eclipse, the first to directly hit the Tri-Lakes in at least a millennium, maybe more.

A total solar eclipse occurs when the moon lines up precisely between the sun and Earth, casting its shadow created by our star — which is usually reserved for the emptiness of space — directly onto our planet, traveling in a line along the globe’s surface.

A partial eclipse on Aug. 21, 2017, brought more than 500 people to the ASCO’s Tupper Lake observatory and around 1,800 to the Wild Center. Both centers considered this eclipse to be a “dry run” for the main event on April 8, 2024.

And this time, McGowan said, Tupper Lake is “smack-dab in the path of totality,” where the totality will last for around three-and-a-half minutes.

“It should look like Woodstock up here,” McGowan said. “That’s why we’re planning a year in advance. People who don’t follow this stuff, they probably don’t have a sense of how big this is.”

Before humans began to understand their skies with astronomy, ancient civilizations believed these eclipses to be a coming apocalypse — a dragon eating the sun, or the day turning to night. Now, we know that eclipses are not the end of the world, but without careful planning, McGowan said it can feel like it is, as a mass of people descend on the tiny towns here.

The event is a year away, which may seem like a cosmic distance, but he said they have to start prepping in 2023.

“People should be planning now, absolutely,” McGowan said.

He said people from all over the world are going to be seeking a coveted spot in the 70-mile-wide path of totality.

Tupper Lake already has some of the darkest skies on the East Coast, as well as the only astronomy-based organization in Adirondacks.

“Everything’s lining up,” McGowan said, astronomically and terrestrially.

On the edges of the path of totality, this event could just last for a few seconds, he said, and while those areas may attract many spectators, people aren’t shy about traveling an extra hour or so to get more time in the moon’s umbra.

He said people planning to come to Tupper Lake should start now.

“The whole region will fill up,” McGowan said. “Nobody has the capacity. Everybody will be booked.”

People may rent rooms around the area and travel to Tupper Lake that day, but he cautions, it may take a while. McGowan predicts this event may bring something almost as uncommon as a total eclipse in the Adirondacks — traffic jams.

He envisions people loading cars with high-tech astronomical gear, families gearing up like they’re going camping and people flying in from all over.

McGowan said there are three levels of planning going on for the eclipse. The Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism is starting a regional effort. A Tupper Lake communitywide group of the town, village, schools, Tupper Arts, the Wild Center and the library, led by the ASCO, has been preparing. And individual planning will be starting within every organization in town, he said.

This is a decentralized event organization. It needs to be, McGowan said, because it will be such a big event. He can plan for setting up telescopes and getting people eclipse glasses, but he doesn’t know how to control traffic or stock up on toilet paper. Yes, that is really a concern.

McGowan said this eclipse has been known since humans started tracking the paths of the sun and moon. It first became more public knowledge during the 2017 eclipse, which Tupper Lake saw 63% coverage in. McGowan said the ASCO has been planning for the 2024 eclipse for at least a year already.

“If you look at what happened across the county in 2017 … those communities that were in totality, were just inundated with people,” he said. “I don’t think people really had an idea before we started talking about how big this will be. … People from all over the world come to see (eclipses).”

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A “mystical” experience

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In 2017, McGowan was one of these celestial seekers. He and his wife traveled down to Hopkinsville, Kentucky, a city of around 30,000 people that was viewed as the epicenter of that eclipse.

An avid amateur astronomer, he had planned this trip a year or two in advance. They dropped their daughter off at college in Lexington and made the three hour drive to Hopkinsville. The city/county of Hopkinsville estimated that around 116,500 people were visiting there that day.

McGowan said every parking lot, every strip mall, every road, every square foot of area was full of vehicles and onlookers craning their necks to the sky. It was so busy, even though they were arriving six hours before the eclipse, they couldn’t get close to the field he wanted to set up at. So he found what was essentially the last spot in a Walmart parking lot, parked illegally and set up his camera.

As the eclipse approached, he said it seemed like it wouldn’t really get dark. As long as one sliver of the sun is unobscured by the moon, it will be bright. But when the moon moved fully in front of the sun, it “just disappears.”

“It was stirring, I mean, moving,” McGowan said. “It gets dark and it gets cold. It gets windy. Birds and all sorts of wildlife, things happen.”

Things happened among the humans, too.

“At first there was a cheer. … And then it was silent,” he said.

Everyone took off their solar glasses and safely viewed the sun’s corona reaching around the moon during totality.

McGowan said it was “eerie” and “night-ish.” They could see stars in the middle of the day. It was summer in the south but he felt a chill — he still wonders, was this the cold or the emotion?

They stood for several minutes, gaining an “ethereal sense of our place in the universe.”

When the sun appeared again, there was another cheer.

“People started hugging each other. It was almost like a religious event,” McGowan said. “I get chills just talking about it. … It’s a mystical type of experience.”

He said having his wife there elevated the experience and recommended everyone find someone they love to share in totality with.

“It’s the type of thing that you’re almost meant to do with somebody,” McGowan said.

Once the eclipse was over, the engines started. It was like when a concert or sporting event lets out, he said. The three-hour drive back to Lexington took 11 hours.

“It was unbelievable. Gas stations along the highway ran out of gas, fast food joints ran out of food. … Even the bathrooms, they had no toilet paper in the bathrooms anymore. … It was just nuts,” McGowan said. “It was like a post-apocalyptic kind of event.”

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Understanding the odds

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McGowan said the moon passes between the sun and the Earth all the time — but the lining up of the three, to cast the shadow of the moon on the Earth, is rare. The moon and sun are vastly different in size, but the distance between them is just enough to make them look roughly the same size from Earth.

The Adirondacks have seen many annular eclipses over the years, but these are less impressive than total solar eclipses, since the moon is farther away from Earth during these, and is not visually large enough to cast a shadow on Earth, blotting out the sun.

McGowan said all planets that have moons have eclipses of some type.

“However, the size-distance ratio makes our moon appear to be the same size as the sun from our perspective on Earth,” he wrote in a text to the Enterprise.

According to NASA data, portions of the Adirondacks have been in the path of totality for total solar eclipses at least four times in the past millennium — on Jun. 16, 1806; Sept. 10, 1569; Jan. 21, 1395; and Dec. 10, 1349. The two most recent eclipses were focused on the southernmost or northernmost portions of the Park.

This will be the most direct hit of an eclipse since at least the Middle Ages.

These events are not random, McGowan said. They are predictable, based on very complex equations.

The moon revolves around Earth every 27 days. The Earth rotates on its axis at a 23.5 degree tilt every 24 hours. The Earth and moon together revolve around the sun every 365 days. The moon is around 238,000 miles from the Earth, but the sun is 93 million miles away.

“You put all of those factors together and you have an astronomically small window of opportunity for it to land in just the right place at the right time,” McGowan said.

He said it is a time for people to get a first-hand sense of the size, scale, distance and heat of the objects orbiting above our heads every day. With it being described as such a monumental experience, but passing so quickly — 3.5 minutes is not long — McGowan was asked how viewers can get the most out of the unique opportunity and truly soak it all in.

He said that’s part of the ASCO’s goal in telling people about the event ahead of time. If people already have knowledge of the odds and coordination it takes for a total solar eclipse, he said they’ll understand what is happening and be free to be in the moment.

“Hopefully, through our outreach, we’ll provide all of that (knowledge) so that people can sort of let go of that scientific wonder and let that graduate to an almost mystical wonder,” McGowan said.

He’s been visiting schools recently, giving perspective to students on the magnitude of the coming event. The ASCO is telling people to “come early, stay late,” he said. They’re planning for speakers, solar imaging workshops, music, fireworks and educational events all over town.

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Clouds

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The certainty of the sun, moon and Earth’s movements is contrasted with the unpredictability of the weather conditions here on the planet. There’s one big question hanging over the whole day — will it be cloudy?

McGowan said it’s a “crap shoot” all over the world if skies will be clear when an eclipse happens. The Adirondacks in April are no stranger to gloomy days. And all he can do is hope. In 2017 when he was driving to Hopkinsville on the day of the eclipse, he said it was raining, but the sky cleared in time for the event.

Even if there are clouds, it’s not necessarily all or nothing, he said. With cloud cover, a total eclipse’s phenomenon can still be felt — the dark, the cold.

It all depends on the type of clouds, the weather, wind and temperature. Clouds are often high and wispy in the Adirondacks, which is good for eclipses, he said. If this is the case, people would be able to see the shadow of the moon approaching on the clouds.

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Viewing the eclipse

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Even during a partial eclipse, it is dangerous to look up at the sun. The sun’s rays overload the retina and can burn the eye leaving long-lasting damage.

“The sun is still the sun,” McGowan said.

Solar glasses must be worn at all other times to prevent damage to the retina. The ASCO has ordered 50,000 eclipse glasses. McGowan said they’ll distribute many of these for free to regional schools.

But a total eclipse brings a unique event — being able to take those glasses off and see the sun’s corona, its outer atmosphere, which is rarely seen as sunlight usually overwhelms the lighter gaseous atmosphere.

McGowan said the ASCO’s roll-off-roof observatory property, the site of a future planned astroscience center, is not big enough for this event. While the public will be filling parks and fields, he said the observatory property will be filled with scientists, photographers and students doing solar imaging and studying the sun’s corona.

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Tourism driver

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While eclipses have been traversing the Earth for as long as the sun, moon and planet have been around, tourism, travel and the world’s population are at unprecedented levels.

On April 5, ROOST announced its plans for preparing the region — businesses, communities, residents and visitors — for the impending celestial event which is anticipated to bring increased visitation.

The tourism marketing and management organization has created two webpages for the eclipse — one, focused on businesses and preparation at roostadk.com/eclipse2024 and another focused on marketing for solar tourists visiting the area at that time at 2024-eclipse.com. This second site features a countdown clock.

ROOST plans to hold a community meeting over Zoom at 5:30 p.m. May 10 to detail its plans and discuss what a total solar eclipse means for the region — outside of a few minutes of darkness.

A link to advance register for this meeting can be found at the ROOST eclipse business webpage.

ROOST is also developing a business resource toolkit with eclipse-related information and materials for local businesses and community members to have and share.

“Beginning these conversations early will allow the Adirondack region to be as prepared as possible for the unprecedented April event,” ROOST Director of Marketing Michelle Clement said in a press release. “Preparing for an influx of solar eclipse enthusiasts is important, especially during what is typically one of the quieter times of year in our communities.”

Clement said the Adirondack region is within a day’s drive for 25% of the North American population and that thoughtful planning can ensure that businesses and towns can “maximize this opportunity.”

McGowan said this is a great opportunity for Adirondacks. If people see beauty of Adirondacks, they may return during a non-eclipse time.

ROOST also has a survey asking what plans businesses and organizations have for the eclipse, if they want assistance creating plans, if they plan to offer specials or packages related to the eclipse and if they will be open at that time. This survey is also at the ROOST eclipse business webpage.

State tourism officials at I Love New York are also trying to attract tourists for the event, and they have set up a webpage — iloveny.com/eclipse-2024 — with resources and a map showing the path of total solar eclipse. Buffalo, Watertown and Plattsurgh are directly in the path, with all of Franklin, Essex, Clinton, St. Lawrence, Jefferson and Lewis counties between the center line and the edge of totality.

There have been dozens of total eclipses in the U.S. in relatively recent history and Tupper Lake will see another annular eclipse toward the end of the century.

The region will experience a partial annular eclipse on Oct. 14 of this year, McGowan said. It will only bring a 20% coverage of the sun, so he said it is not as big a deal as the eclipse next year, but it does come during the ASCO’s astrophotography conference, so area astrophotographers will have the chance to hone their skills as they prepare for April 8, 2024.