MENASHA, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – On April 8, a total solar eclipse will sweep across North America.
The path of totality — where the moon will totally block out the sun — will span from Mexico, across the U.S., and finally to the Canadian Maritimes before ending over the north Atlantic.
Here in Green Bay, we won’t see totality. About 87% of the sun will be covered up.
While that sounds like it’s pretty close to the full thing, Barlow Planetarium Director Dr. Teri Gee has seen an eclipse at totality — and she says there’s still a big difference.
“It’s completely different. Once the sun is completely covered — and it’s only in a 70 to 100 mile wide path — once it’s covered, it’s like darkness, but you can look and see daylight on either side. It’s weird.”
If you do want to try to check out totality, the path comes fairly close to Northeast Wisconsin — as long as you’re okay with a road trip.
It’ll start crossing into the United States in Texas around 1:30 central time. It progresses to the northeast from there, across Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri. Then it approaches its closest point to Northeast Wisconsin.
If you’re looking to try to head to east-central Illinois, south of Champaign, that’s going to take 6-7 hours of driving from Green Bay, just to get to the nearest edge of the path of totality.
For west-central and central Indiana, that’s a bit closer. The edge of totality is more like a 5-6 hour drive from Green Bay. And if you head out past Fort Wayne in eastern Indiana, that will once again be about a 6 or 7 hour drive from Green Bay.
Totality will be occurring here around or just after 2 p.m. our time, or 3 p.m. eastern time.
From there, the eclipse continues up to Maine and then out across the Canadian Maritimes.
If you’re staying local, the moon starts to move in front of the sun shortly before 1 p.m. April 8.
We reach our maximum extent of about 87% coverage at 2:09 p.m. and the moon fully exits the solar disc at 3:21 p.m.
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