Saturday still was two days before the full solar eclipse would occur in the Route 66 town of St. Clair, Missouri, but hundreds of people already had descended there.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported visitors from Missouri, Illinois, Arkansas, Texas, Tennessee, Kentucky, California and elsewhere Saturday. And the bulk of the traffic wasn’t even anticipated until today.
Multiple hotels in Franklin County, including the Super 8 motels in Washington and Union and the Best Western Plus in Washington, said they’ve been sold out for up to a year. Some local residents had given their addresses, phone numbers and rental prices to the Super 8 in Union, asking the motel to give them out to last-minute customers needing a place to stay, said Kim Long, the motel’s assistant manager.
Other newspapers in Missouri are reporting that campgrounds and hotels elsewhere throughout the state have been booked for months.
And several news outlets report the eclipse may produce the largest mass migration in history. Naturally, that has traffic engineers and cellular companies a bit concerned.
St. Clair boasts one of the best viewing durations of the eclipse of 2 minutes, 41 seconds. Only Makanda in southern Illinois and a few other rural areas have a longer one.
St. Clair is hosting a eclipse festival this weekend, with the tagline “Get Your Eclipse on Route 66.” The eclipse will begin at 11:48 a.m. local time Monday, totality begins at 1:15 p.m., and the eclipse ends at 2:43 p.m.
Other Route 66 towns in Missouri that should experience a total eclipse include Pacific, Stanton, Villa Ridge, Eureka, Gray Summit, Sullivan, Bourbon, Cuba and virtually all of south St. Louis.
As for whether all those folks in St. Clair and other Route 66 towns will see it remains unknown. The latest forecast for that area Monday from the National Weather Service calls for mostly sunny skies but a 20 percent chance of thunderstorms after 1 p.m. So cloud cover may become an issue.
(Image of the 1979 total solar eclipse in Canada by akademy via Flickr)