22nd July 2028, totality passes straight over Sydney 04:00 UT and it's a four minute long beauty.
I might have to be there!!
4 minutes of totality? wow!
It lasted less than 2 minutes here, and was only about 95% or so here in Portland, OR. It darkened the sky and made the shadows of my chain-link fence look like they were moving on the ground. I'm guessing because of the rays coming from the sun?! That was kinda cool.
The shadows through the trees and bushes were all crescent shaped. Like a bunch of little half circles everywhere. The sky was twilight, almost dark, was kinda eerie being in the middle of the day. But, it wasn't like the twilight like you see near dusk. It was kinda strange, almost hypnotic. And no, I wasn't drinking. My nephew went up on the mountain. He said He looked across Portland and could see the shadow creeping across.
If I had been able to drive to Salem, I would have seen it in totality and actually seen the stars out. But traffic was just horrible. There was like a million more people on the road traveling from all over (California/Washington, Nevada, etc.) to come see it. Traffic was horrible. Took my friends nearly 6 hours to make the 45-60 minute drive back from Salem. So I'm glad I stayed in Portland. Would have been nice to see totality, but I remember seeing it when I was 4 years old in 1979. I'll see it again. They say one occurs every 18 months or so somewhere across the planet.
Maybe I'll save up and take a trip to Australia and see 4 minutes of it when it happens in 2028.
Dave, FYI, those are Forever stamps. Meaning a letter (basically with the weight of the envelope and about 3 or 4 pieces of letter size paper), you can mail within the US forever with one of those. Even if they raise the cost of shipping said letter to 50 bucks!
NivagSwerdna was very nice to go halves in on the cost and shipping it to ya.
Hope ya enjoy them.
Jason