What Central Minnesota Can Expect During Monday's Solar Eclipse

ST. CLOUD (WJON News) -- Much of the country will experience a solar eclipse on Monday afternoon.

Here in central Minnesota, we are not in the path of totality, but we are expected to have nearly 76 percent coverage.

St. Cloud State University Planetarium Director Rachel Humphrey says you should notice it.

What you are going to notice is, that it's not going to get pitch black, but one of the things that you'll see is that the colors will look kind of mutated. It will look as though someone has turned down a dimmer, it's not going to be totally dark.

The peak for the eclipse for us will be at 2:02 p.m. on Monday. However, right now the forecast is calling for cloudy skies on Monday, which will impact how much we'll see.

Humphrey says for us it will be similar to the eclipse in 2017 which had 82 percent coverage here in central Minnesota, and that also happened on a cloudy day.

To gear up for the event, the SCSU Planetarium has given out over 3,000 solar-safe glasses. If you buy a pair for yourself online, Humphrey reminds you to make sure they are NASA-certified to be safe.

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She says she'll be traveling with six students to Indiana to be a part of the National Eclipse Ballooning Project.

We will be in the path of totality. We are going down to Indiana for that event. We're going to be launching balloons for 30 straight hours so that we can see how the conditions of the atmosphere change during the 24 hours leading up to the eclipse and six hours after.

The students also participated in the annular eclipse last fall. Humphrey reminds you to not look directly at the sun.

In 1973, the planetarium was opened to SCSU students and the community.

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Source: What Central Minnesota Can Expect During Monday’s Solar Eclipse

Categories: St. Cloud News