It is rare for a total solar eclipse to occur twice in the same place – on average once every 366 years. In 2019, it happened in the Pacific Ocean, far west of the coast of Chile. As luck would have it, the next one will cover an area of about 10,000 square miles, including parts of southern Illinois, southeastern Missouri and western Kentucky.
People in these areas will experience the April 8 eclipse about seven years after they were near the center of the path of the “Great American Eclipse.”
In celebration of the August 21, 2017 total eclipse, Southern Illinois University sold out its football stadium in Carbondale.
“People were screaming,” said Bob Baer, director of the university’s astronomical observations program. “But unlike a football game, everyone was screaming for the same thing.”
This college town of just about 22,000 people was one in all the hottest destinations in the Midwest during the 2017 solar eclipse. Now Carbondale and its neighbors are preparing for one other day without sun. While in 2017, cities in the area spent a mean of about two and a half minutes in the darkness of totality, this time they may experience about 4 minutes of totality. Preparations and hype have also increased.
Mr. Baer first heard that Carbondale, five hours south of Chicago, was at the intersection of two solar eclipses nearly a decade before the 2017 event. However, the importance of this information didn’t dawn on him until 2014, when an astronomer from the National Solar Observatory contacted him.
“When I understood, I almost fell off my chair,” Mr. Baer said, though he was attempting to persuade anyone else. “When I started talking to people about the eclipse, their eyes lit up. I would lose them in the first 20 seconds.”
That began to vary as August 2017 approached. About 14,000 people visited Carbondale, which had been planning for the eclipse for three years. Clouds blocked most of the view that day, but the shared experience still made an impression on people. The excitement about the event still resonates seven years later.
“The atmosphere is still pretty electric here,” Baer said. “A lot of expectations.”
Not everyone was as prepared as Carbondale was in 2017. Seventy miles away, Paducah, Kentucky, officials were surprised by the number of tourists.
“We had no idea what to expect,” said Angela Schade, downtown development specialist for Paducah’s planning department. He remembers how locals rented out their yards to vacationers, attempting to make room for everyone arriving for the solar eclipse. Ms. Schade watched the spectacle from the car parking zone at work, but didn’t fully understand what she was experiencing.
Paducah is hosting this 12 months Street festival where educators will teach people about eclipses. The National Quilt Museum – Paducah’s claim to fame – will host the exhibit exhibition presents the work of Karen Nyberg, a retired NASA astronaut who sews quilts with space motifs.
Ms. Schade also makes sure Paducah’s streetlights don’t mechanically activate after dark.
Paducah wasn’t the only crossroads town to flood in 2017. In Makanda, Illinois, a village of fewer than 600 people, a wave of 12,000 people showed as much as see the solar eclipse.
“All hands on deck,” said Debbie Dunn, festival events coordinator. The city that was in the middle of the eclipse’s path experienced the longest duration of totality. One artist painted a neon orange line across the city – and through his own studio – to mark the center line of the moon’s shadow.
In April, Makanda will not be the place of the longest totality – it is going to be near Torreón, Mexico. However, Ms. Dunn says there appears to be more interest in the eclipse than in 2017.
“All the surrounding communities planned this whole thing,” she said, adding that last time Carbondale was the only place in southern Illinois that did something big.
Events aren’t limited to the day of the eclipse – communities plan celebrations the weekend before and the evening after the total eclipse. Part of that is strategic: Makanda, for example, is organizing a dance on the night of April 8 in hopes of easing the post-eclipse traffic jams that paralyzed the city in 2017.
Pat Hunt, who runs Apple Creek Vineyard and Winery is hosting a weekend filled with live music and food together with his family in Friedheim, Missouri.
Ms Hunt described the situation at her vineyard in 2017 as chaotic, mainly because nobody knew how many individuals would show up. “We had nightmares the first time,” she said. “We weren’t as prepared as we needed to be.”
This time they are selling tickets to regulate guest arrivals and are hiring 10 employees to assistance on the day of the eclipse, a lot of whom concentrate on traffic and parking.
In 2017, university towns seemed higher prepared. “We weren’t caught off guard,” said Bruce Skinner, chairman of the eclipse commission at Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau. In 2017, the event coincided with the first day of classes, so the university included it in orientation activities.
Classes will probably be canceled on April 8 as a consequence of a school-wide block party. Many students will support research projects funded by NASA.
After that, a total solar eclipse is not going to occur until 2045 near this region, which can fortunately have the option to look at two in seven years.
“For many people who see this, it will be a once-in-a-lifetime event,” Dr. Skinner said. But for those stuck at the crossroads, “it will be a once-in-a-lifetime situation.”
