ASHEVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) — The clouds thinned out. Asheville got a glimpse of the partial eclipse. There were cheers in Pack Square Park, because Western North Carolina avoided the path of total disappointment.
Earthlings in Asheville and elsewhere across Western North Carolina waited in anticipation of the partial solar eclipse on Monday, worried that the promised “partly cloudy” skies would blot out the spectacle as the moon fell in line with the sun and casts a shadow below.
The region was east of the so-called “path of totality,” but the Land of Sky still got a show with the sun peeking through a thin patch of clouds just a few minutes before the projected peak moment of 3:09 p.m.
At 828newsNOW.com, there was real time coverage as it happened. Below is a collection of chronological updates.
- “Sun and moon will dance, but some clouds might cut in.”
- “Forecast ‘partly cloudy,’ but hopes high for Monday’s solar eclipse.”
At 2:25 p.m. a few dozen people were gathering at an eclipse watching party at the open-air, rooftop Perspective Café at the Asheville Art Museum.
After spending time outside, one visitor asked head of operations Neal Page if he could point out the direction of the sun. The cloud cover was so thick that it was hard to tell.
Page was looking on the bright side, sharing trivia about the upcoming temperature drop close to 3 p.m. as one of the things people were sure to experience regardless.
“We’re really proud to have such a beautiful rooftop looking across the Blue Ridge vista. We wanted to make this a special moment…a moment through the human experience,” Page said.
Outside, Asheville artists MaryJane Findley and Claire Changry were sitting, conversing and hoping to see the sun. Or not.
“I don’t care. It’s going to get dark whether we see the sun or not,” Findley said. She was having a moment to think about her late mother, who passed away not long after the last big eclipse. An eclipse, she said, reminds her of “the space between two worlds is strong right now, because everything’s dark.”
Changry said she wanted to do something special for the eclipse, “Knowing there’s not going to be another for 20 years.”
About 2:50 p.m., Mike Wielgosz, of Durham, Conn., and his family were sitting outside the museum, using a star-gazer app on a cell phone to locate the sun because it certainly couldn’t be seen in the skies above.
“I’m looking at a bunch of clouds,” he said, showing a reporter the crystal clear photo of an eclipse he shot in 2017. “I’m hoping the clouds get out of the way and we can see it.”
Was he disappointed? “It is what it is,” he said. “It’ll happen again in 20 years.”
When his 7-year-old son, Wyatt, was asked what he was looking at, he said, “Total cloudiness.”
But then, just a short time later around 3:05 p.m., a light appeared through a thin layer of cloud cover. Light cheers and heavy chatter rattled through a crowd of a few dozen people gathered in the museum’s courtyard, and folks looked skyward clutching their cardboard protective spectacles.
“Things like this are important,” said Heather Newton, an Uber driver from Asheville as her Maltese, Daisy, tugged on a leash. “Out with the chaos, in with the creativity!” Newton declared.
Nearby, workers stepped out of Biltmore corporate offices to gaze skyward, and people without protective glasses used their cell phone cameras as shields.
“We’re trying to decide if the birds are usually this noisy or not,” said Nancy, who declined to give her last name. She said it had been fun watching everybody arrive, uncertain at first if they’d get to see anything and then excited when the thin clouds finally offered the view. “Everybody coming together, looking up at the same spot…” she said.
A bit down the street, 7-year-old first-grader Gavin Salmeron looked through his protective glasses while his father, Brian Salmeron, was busy taking picture nearby.
“It was better than I expected,” Gavin Salmeron said, marveling at the crescent shape of the sun at that moment. “It reminds me of a banana.”
Asked what he’d tell people about the eclipse, he said, “I’d tell ‘em, don’t look at the sun so long without your glasses. It can melt your eyes.”
Within about 30 minutes, downtown sky-gazers started to scatter, even as the spectacle of the partial eclipse still was visible overhead.
Visiting from Springfield, Va., Anne McEvoy said she was “grumpy” when she first looked up at cloudy skies, but she got the payoff in the end. “It has been really neat, actually. It’s an event.”
What would she tell people who missed the partial eclipse?
“I think they missed out,” she said. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event.”
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story gave the incorrect spelling of the rooftop Perspective Café.