Will traffic counts on I-93 north of the city eclipse past records?

You can probably youtube the 2017 eclipse. Watching on a device is … not worth it. Just go outside.

I've seen eclipses before, with over 90% of the sun covered, and they were interesting, but basically nonevents. Even just a sliver of sun looks like a slightly darker day, with stranger crisper light than usual, but still sunny. Partial eclipses are more akin to a lunar eclipse. What I saw in the path of totality on Monday from a hilltop farm in Albany, Vermont was absolutely one of the most spectacular things I've ever witnessed. And not just what we could see in the sky. As totality came closer, everything slowly got bluer, like a cold filter was put over the sky, and the temperature dropped. In the minute or so before totality, rippling shadow waves began to sweep across the snow covered ground in front of us, the horizon above the mountains in the distance turned yellow and red, and just as totality came, the skies suddenly darkened, like someone had flipped a switch, stars and planets became visible, but light remained on the horizon in all directions. And of course, the silver fiery ring in the sky. Just spectacular. Over in the farm's pond, the geese and ducks called it quits and went to bed, the chickens roosted under a picnic table, and some of the cows and goats walked away and laid down. After those few minutes, the sun came back as quickly as it went away, and no one cared to look at the moon finish its transit across the sun, because it was almost as bright as a normal day after a few minutes, even though 95% of the sun was still covered. The drive from Albany, VT to Haverhill, NH, which normally takes a little over an hour took almost three hours, and from Haverhill, I had to drive home to Boston. My normal route via the Lost River Highway (NH 112), a very lightly used remote mountain highway, was backed up for over ten miles from North Woodstock, over Kinsman Notch, to NH 116, which is unthinkable, even in the height of fall foliage season. Instead I took NH 25 and got on I-93 in Plymouth. Both NH 25 and I-93 were very crowded, well into the evening, but mostly moved quickly.

At 0927, Google Maps is showing very slow (dark red) traffic on 93N from Lincoln to the Notch.

I suspect today’s traffic is everyone who didn’t book a place months in advance. My coworkers only started planning maybe two weeks ago when media hype caught up, but found no rooms available in northern New England. Many of them are now planning on driving up this morning/early afternoon. We on the other hand booked our place in November, had a leisurely Friday night drive, and am enjoying the area.

Also, a lot of people had plans to be elsewhere to watch the eclipse, but the forecast was for clouds, so they made a gametime call to go to VT.

When we needed to regroup about 2 weeks out I decided to think outside of the country. I easily booked Saturday and Sunday nights in Montreal (barely in the path of totality), and had to work a little to secure a room in the Eastern Townships for Monday.

No problems at all getting through on Saturday. We experienced very little traffic aside from an accident scene on the A15 in Montreal. We baled early Monday for Lac Memphramagog and hit zero traffic getting there and getting a prime viewing location for the Great Gig in the Sky.

We took our time getting home today. Roads were busy, but not gumming up.

I still can't believe the absolutely cloudless sky and what 3.5 minutes of totality was like.