⛅ Eclipse Weather Forecasting

Why

To help plan trips to experience a total eclipse. Inspired by graphic on New York Times.

Currently hard-coded for values for the 2024 North American total solar eclipse.

Example Forecast Graphic

Getting Started

Assumption is that you have Python and Poetry installed.

# Install python deps
poetry install

Various static data sources also need to be downloaded manually for this program to work. This is a one-time thing. See the Manual Resources section for more information.

Usage

Run the following in your terminal:

./run.sh

View the generated image in the data/out directory.

Create a config/config.json file to adjust program parameters. Refer to the example config here.

Resources

Automated 🤖

• ⛅ NOAA National Blend of Models
  • Weather forecast for locations during the eclipse. The total cloud cover metric is the primary data source behind this project, allowing users to understand what sky visibility is expected for a given location. This project focuses on the Contiguous United States (CONUS region). Learn more about the data source here: https://vlab.noaa.gov/web/mdl/nbm-download

Manual 👷

• 🌑🌞 NASA Scientific Visualization Studio Eclipse Data

  • Path covered by the moon's shadow. Learn more here: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5073
  • Download 2024eclipse_shapefiles.zip, and extract to the data/eclipse_path/ folder.

• 🗺️ US Census TIGER

  • Base map of United states to help visualize eclipse and weather relative to land. Learn more here: https://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/geo/shapefiles/index.php
  • On the TIGER webpage, select the latest year, and the "States (and equivalent)" Layer type. Submit the form to download. Extract to the data/base_maps/ folder.