Solar eclipse day dawned nicely for the event to come in a bit over six hours. A nearly clear sky was thinly decorated by a crisscrossing waveform of cirrus not often seen, and even more seldom shot by me: the vertebratus subspecies of cirrus fibratus. The name, of course, comes from the resemblance of the smaller waveforms to vertebrae, or more precisely ribs attached thereto. The old cliche, “Trouble was on the horizon,” definitely applied here. See the haze at distant right, behind and between the shorter buildings and WFAA antenna? That marked the leading part of a moist slab of richer Gulf return flow in the boundary layer, leading to a highly worrisome deck of stratus that hung tough well into the noon hour. That stratus broke into stratocumuli and scud as the sun started getting covered, then opening a large gap with little time to spare. At this point, I knew the stratus was coming, and we had plenty of time to get in the car and drive to Arkansas for a more guaranteed eclipse experience. However, we hung tight, taking the gamble that we would get enough cloud breakup to see full totality. Nothing worth doing comes without risk! In the end, going nowhere was the riskiest, but definitely the best, course of (in)action for the experience and compositions I had wanted since childhood: totality in my home city.
Dallas TX (8 Apr 24) Looking ENE
32.7764, -96.8097