Sun screen: New Orleans crowds gather for eclipse, but cloudy day dampens excitement (2024)

The crowd grew restless with a few minutes to go, hoping the clouds would clear long enough to get a glimpse of the rare event they had gathered to see: the moon eclipsing the sun.

Then it started to rain.

Those who had them grabbed umbrellas. Some covered themselves with blankets. Most took shelter under the library breezeway on the University of New Orleans campus.

It was a bad omen, but it would not be a total wash. The rain wasn’t much more than a brief drizzle.

When 1:50 p.m. approached, the eclipse enthusiasts all scurried out onto the edge of the oak-lined quad to position themselves again, some with protective glasses and others … not so much. Shouts went up from the crowd. It was dark, but not nighttime dark – more like a stormy day kind of dark.

“I actually did see it,” said Cyd Hernandez, a 21-year-old electrical engineering student who swore off protective glasses to get a glimpse with the naked eye, reasoning that it was cloudy enough to prevent real ocular damage. “It was gorgeous.”

Others exclaimed that they didn’t see anything – though sometimes with stronger language to make their point.

One 19-year-old student, Justin Kondroik, managed to get a video with his phone showing the brief blockage in its partial splendor, playing it for others in the crowd. He declared the protective glasses – too dark to see in cloudy conditions – “pretty much a scam.”

‘A veil of clouds’

It was a dismal denouement to a day that generated a good deal of excitement, not only on UNO’s campus, but statewide and across the nation. Another total solar eclipse visible here is not expected until 2044.

New Orleans did not see the sun totally obscured – only about 85%, unlike other parts of the country that were plunged into full darkness. On top of that, a particularly cloudy day left many disappointed.

But the enthusiasm was still there. The watch party organized by UNO, SUNO and the New Orleans Public Library began handing out 300 pairs of protective glasses at noon, explained Lora Amsberryaugier, interim dean of UNO’s Earl K. Long Library.

A long line formed, and all glasses were gone within 10 minutes.

The event wasn’t only for students. Ann Garvey, Gina Sanders and Patti Muller took the opportunity to stretch out picnic-style on the quad and enjoy the day, eating strawberries but joking that they should have brought Moon Pies.

The group of friends, all in their 60s, picked up and took cover when the rain started, but moved back into view at the peak of the eclipse. Garvey managed to catch a glimpse.

“It was kind of like a veil – a veil of clouds over it,” said Garvey. “But you could still see it clearly behind it.”

‘Can’t print it in the paper’

Someone from ancient times transported into the present might have mistaken it for a religious ceremony given the crowds gathered staring into the sky. But, unlike in ancient times, there were no human sacrifices, as Joel Webb, a UNO mathematician who gave a brief lecture on eclipses at the event, explained.

Earlier civilizations such as the Mayans would have seen a total eclipse as a bad sign. A human sacrifice may have been offered.

“You can’t print it in the paper, what they would do,” Webb said.

But while the times are tamer these days, some in the highly diverse crowd were carrying out their own rituals. One 18-year-old psychology student, Jace Rondeno, carried around his red electric guitar – to pass the time while he waited, though he noted he was also inspired by Jimi Hendrix, “who always had his with him.”

The effects caused by an eclipse are not simply the switch from light to darkness, Andrew Farnsworth, a visiting scientist at the Center for Avian Population Studies at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, recently told journalists in a briefing.

The moon’s blocking of the sun’s rays reaching the earth causes temperatures to drop and often results in wind speeds decreasing, both of which can change animal behaviors.

Those effects extend to water bodies, including the Gulf of Mexico and Louisiana’s coastal waterways, he said. Fish schooling patterns could be disrupted, and some that normally swim to the surface after sunset could be found at the ocean’s surface.

It was a learning experience, too, for those at UNO. Organizers gave participants a chance to spin a wheel, answer a question on the subject it landed on, and win a prize.

Students from the LC Learning Center in LaPlace were among them. One 10-year-old, Jade Clofer, also did the math to figure out how long it would be before she could witness another eclipse.

“I’m going to be 30,” she said.

Staff writer Mark Schleifstein contributed to this report.