MESQUITE, Texas — After beholding the midday darkness of a total solar eclipse that raced across the continent, thousands of spectators in New England were stuck seeing only brake lights Monday night as highway traffic backed up for hours.
Crowds of motorists leaving remote northern New Hampshire in the late afternoon clogged local roads leading to Interstate 93, which they found also thronged by cars inching southward. By midnight, some drivers had traveled only 50 miles (80 km) in nine hours.
The New Hampshire Department of Transportation urged patience and said there were about 22,000 more vehicles visiting the tiny state compared to the same time last year. Heavy traffic was also reported in Vermont and Massachusetts.
For those unlucky travelers, the gridlock made for a frustrating end to a thrilling day for those fortunate enough to glimpse the spectacle of the eclipse through clear skies.
Street lights blinked on and the planets came into view, as the moon shrouded the sun for a few minutes across the land. Dogs howled, frogs croaked and some people wept, all part of the eclipse mania gripping Mexico, the U.S. and Canada.
Almost everyone in North America could see at least a partial eclipse, weather permitting.
It was the continent’s biggest eclipse audience ever, with a couple hundred million people living in or near the shadow’s path, plus scores of out-of-towners flocking in to see it. With the next coast-to-coast eclipse 21 years out, the pressure was on to catch this one.
Clouds blanketed most of Texas as the total solar eclipse began its diagonal dash across land, starting along Mexico’s mostly clear Pacific coast and aiming for Texas and 14 other U.S. states, before exiting into the North Atlantic near Newfoundland.
In Georgetown, Texas, the skies cleared just in time to give spectators a clear view. In other spots, the eclipse played peek-a-boo with the clouds.
“We are really lucky,” said Georgetown resident Susan Robertson. “Even with the clouds it is kind of nice, because when it clears up, it is like, Wow!”
“I will never unsee this,” said Ahmed Husseim of Austin, who had the eclipse on his calendar for a year.
Just east of Dallas, the hundreds gathered at Mesquite’s downtown area cheered and whistled as the clouds parted in the final minutes before totality. As the sun finally became cloaked, the crowd grew louder, whipping off their eclipse glasses to soak in the unforgettable view of the sun’s corona, or spiky outer atmosphere, and Venus shining brilliantly off to the right.
Going into Monday’s spectacle, northern New England into Canada had the best chances of clear skies, and that didn’t change. Holly Randall, who watched from Colebrook, New Hampshire, said experiencing the eclipse was beyond her expectations.
“I didn’t expect to cry when I saw it,” she said, as tears ran down her face.
The show got underway in the Pacific before noon EDT. As the darkness of totality reached the Mexican resort city of Mazatlán, the faces of spectators were illuminated only by the screens of their cellphones.
The cliff-hanging uncertainty of the weather added to the drama. But the morning’s overcast skies in Mesquite didn’t rattle Erin Froneberger, who was in town for business and brought along her eclipse glasses.
“We are always just rushing, rushing, rushing,” she said. “But this is an event that we can just take a moment, a few seconds that it’s going to happen and embrace it.”
A festival outside Austin wrapped up early on Monday because of the threat of afternoon storms. Festival organizers urged everyone to pack up and leave.
Eclipse spectators at Niagara Falls State Park had to settle for darkness, but no stunning corona views. As people made their way out of the park a little more than an hour later, the sun broke through.
“I’d give it a 6 out of 10,” said Haleigh Thibodeau, who traveled from Buxton, Maine, with her mother.
In Rushville, Indiana, the street lights lit up as darkness fell, drawing cheers and applause from residents gathered on porches and sidewalks.
