Lenawee County History: April 8 solar eclipse a once-in-a-lifetime event

I have seen many lunar and partial solar eclipses in my time, but the upcoming total solar eclipse will be the first in my half-century of life.

I am hoping for cloudless skies for my first immersive experience in mid-day darkness.

The last time a total solar eclipse was visible in Michigan was 1954. The eclipse set for April 8 will only see a few moments of totality in southeastern Monroe County. Lenawee County will have 99% of the sun blocked out, but for me, I want the whole thing.

The weather forecast will ultimately determine where I will find myself that day. Ideally, the Toledo-Sandusky area will afford a couple minutes of darkness shortly before 3:30 p.m. People between Sandusky and Cleveland will have more time, but that is a long way to go from this area. Statistically, this area on April 8 sees mostly cloudy skies, or cloud cover of 70 to 80%. Hopefully, this will be an off-year.

There have only been a handful of non-total solar eclipses over the past 50 years of my life. The first was Feb. 26, 1979, where about 80% of the sun was obscured. I don’t remember much about this one. We talked about it in the classroom, but kindergarteners don’t know enough about the dangers of looking at the sun to not get into trouble. So my class just learned about it inside.

The first one that I experienced was on May 30, 1984, where a partial solar eclipse brought us upper elementary students outside to use our pinhole devices to indirectly see what was going on above. Still, a partial eclipse doesn’t plunge the countryside into darkness

On May 10, 1994, southern Michigan experienced an annular eclipse, where the moon passes across the sun, but is too far from us to blot out the light. Instead, a ring of light prevents total darkness, but enough that the birds stop chirping, thinking sunset is taking place. I was at Clarklake that day, and I captured two photos of what my pinhole projector offered.

The next solar eclipse of any significance was on Aug. 21, 2017. I was at Lake Hudson Recreation Area. The temperature dropped from 87 to 79 degrees between the start of and the peak time of eclipse, where 82% of the sun was blocked out by the moon. The landscape took on a slight dull, orange tint. Pinhole-sized openings in the leaves on the trees overhead cast tiny crescents all over the ground.

The next total solar eclipse viewable from the United States, after the upcoming one April 8, will be Aug. 23, 2044, viewable mostly from the Pacific Northwest near sunset. A total solar eclipse viewable from the Great Lakes area is mapped out for Sept. 14, 2099. Quite frankly, I’ll be dead by then, so I am planning to take advantage of the rare opportunity in a couple weeks.

— Dan Cherry is a Lenawee County historian.