State shares a moment
Eclipse is said to be ‘magical’
Just as it had been predicted, the roughly four minutes of totality provided by Monday’s total solar eclipse arrived in Russellville at 1:50 p.m and began leaving four minutes later.
At least a few thousand people gathered in the downtown area cheered and whistled and counted down to the big moment as if it were New Year’s Eve.
Darian Oliphant, who had made the trip to Russellville from Utah by way of Missouri with his three kids and his partner, Laureen, called the moment “magical.”
It was “spooky in the best way.”
From the southwest corner of the state to the northeast corner, the eclipse — the state’s first since 1918 — made its slow march across Arkansas without a hitch Monday. The crowds that had gathered along its path, though falling short of expectations in terms of numbers, were duly impressed.
Making it better, Arkansas had managed to defy the weather predictions.
When early afternoon suddenly turned into 8 p.m., the skies were almost completely clear. Not a drop had been felt all day in Russellville, the eclipse’s epicenter in the state.
A once-in-a-lifetime moment in Arkansas had been picture perfect, even if there weren’t 1.5 million visitors in the state.
According to National Weather Service Senior Forecaster Joe Goudsward, the eclipse was right on schedule and the weather was not a problem.
“For much of the state, it was less of a factor than we were initially thinking. There was still a fairly decent deal of high clouds, but it wasn’t as extensive as we were originally thinking,” he said.
“We still had the lower clouds across parts of southwest and southeast
Arkansas, where we thought they were going to be, but we thought we’d see more of the high-level clouds across the remainder of the state. We didn’t see quite as many of those,” said Goudsward.
Conditions in most of the high-population areas were pretty good, says Goudsward. There were some clouds in Little Rock, and Conway and Russellville were virtually clear.
The smaller-than-expected crowds meant there were no real highway problems across the state. Official traffic numbers will not be out until tomorrow, says Dave Parker a spokesperson with the Arkansas Department of Transportation, but traffic was about what they were expecting.
“Coming into the day there wasn’t really a whole lot. It seemed to be that slow trickle that we had hoped for,” he said.
Parker said that there was a 10% increase in traffic the day before the eclipse compared to an average Sunday. It may have been noticeable to some drivers, but it was nothing compared to traffic after the fact.
“When the eclipse was over that’s when the traffic really started: anything west of Russellville on (Interstate) 40, (Arkansas) 65 in the north central part of the state, (Interstate) 555 and there’s, of course, there’s a bit of backup on (Interstate) 440 near Lonoke. Those are the areas that gave us the most traffic post-eclipse,” said Parker.
“We haven’t had that gridlock just yet. Even areas with heavy traffic are still moving.” he said. “I hope it doesn’t get there.”
Of course, the smooth traffic situation was probably a direct result of the state’s not having drawn as many people as state leaders and the Department of Emergency Management had anticipated.
Multiple calls to ADEM Monday for comment on the visitor numbers were unsuccessful.
In Jasper, a couple of hundred people milled around downtown on Monday waiting for the eclipse. The crowd cheered when the moon totally blocked the sun.
“It was so beautiful,” said Beth Franklin of Bentonville. “It was much prettier than I expected, like at totality, that ring of light.”
NO BIG INFLUX
But not everybody in town was feeling cheery. The promised crowds didn’t show.
As far back as the summer of 2022, predictions were that Jasper, population 547, and Newton County, population 7,228, should prepare for an influx of at least 25,000 people for the eclipse, but crowds were nowhere near those levels on Monday.
“As far as I know we didn’t run out of gas, stuff like that that they said was going to happen,” said Russ Todd, owner of the Ozark Cafe in Jasper. “Stores were going to be wiped clean. We even got a flyer in the mail that said stock up on everything, I think it was overkill a little bit.”
Those flyers went to every residence in the county, courtesy of the Newton County Chamber of Commerce and Area Agency on Aging.
“Refill medicine prescriptions early,” the flyers read. “Have some cash on hand in case credit card machines go down.”
In 2022, P. Clay Sherrod, an astronomical researcher and consultant from the Arkansas Sky Observatories on Petit Jean Mountain, presented two lectures on the eclipse that summer, and another one in the fall. He predicted anywhere from about 25,000 to 230,000 people would come to Newton County for the eclipse.
Sherrod said Newton County didn’t want that kind of influx of tourism, so they didn’t really promote the eclipse. He said they could expect a few thousand “day trippers” on Monday.
Mike Thomas, mayor of Jasper, took issue with that.
“I do not know where he got this information, but we have always and will continue to welcome visitors to our area and to view the eclipse,” Thomas said in an email.
Bubba Lloyd, owner of Bubba’s Buffalo River Store, said he’d had customers from all over the country on Monday, including California, Florida, Massachusetts, Colorado, Utah, Iowa and Ohio.
He said Sunday was one of the top days of sales since his store opened four years ago.
“We realized the uptick Saturday afternoon after a slow Saturday morning,” said Lloyd. “And then it’s just been building up ever since. Today’s been a really good day,”
Regarding efforts to bring in tourists for the eclipse, Lloyd said, “Well, here they don’t like a lot of tourism anyway. … But it’s been a real good thing for us. Some places didn’t even open today.”
Three of Jasper’s better known restaurants didn’t open on Monday, but they’re not normally open on Mondays.
The dearth of eclipse-generated business was felt in Batesville, too. Southern Tire Mart planned a watch party in their parking lot. Nobody showed, though, according to manager Sky Clark.
“We felt like our parking lot would fill up, but we just didn’t have that,” Clark said. Instead, the manager said they might have had just a single customer from out of town.
In-house traffic at the shop was down, in fact. Clark suspected locals stayed at home, rather than risk potentially busy or hazardous roads.
The staff at the tire shop watched traffic and didn’t notice any significant upticks in passing vehicles before or after the eclipse. He also monitored traffic from Jonesboro to Batesville on IDriveArkansas, and didn’t see any reports that suggested thicker traffic.
Clark wondered if concerns last week about cloud cover from forecasters prompted some potential travelers to journey elsewhere in search of sunny skies for the eclipse.
They didn’t need to.
PINNACLE MOUNTAIN
Sunny skies were the order of the day for eclipse watchers at Pinnacle Mountain, where scores of people who had hiked to the summit hours before cheered as totality dusked the mountain at 1:51 p.m. Those present got a 360-degree view of Central Arkansas, as pale color from scattered sunlight ringed the horizon, lights in the lowlands near Little Rock shone and gliding birds of prey took little apparent notice of the spectacle.
“We chose Pinnacle just yesterday because we didn’t want to watch it on our own: we knew that we would be around a bunch of other people,” said Tracy Childers, who came to the mountain from Memphis with his family as he pointed out neighbors from Alabama, North Carolina, Florida, Mississippi and France.
A ranger said Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her family hiked the park’s East Quarry Trail during the eclipse; her visit was closed to the press, per her public schedule.
Crowds quickly moved to descend once the moon continued its run past the sun, mostly taking the easier West Summit Trail back down 725 feet.
“I definitely have a different outlook on it since I was so much younger when it happened,” said Braden Welk, 21, who came to the park to watch the eclipse from Charleston, S.C. “It was just breathtaking. I didn’t take any time to record it or anything: I just had to look at it the whole time. It made 2 minutes feel like 30 seconds.”
“These natural occurrences have a larger meaning to me now, more than they did then,” she said. “A lot like me coming into myself and seeing the world as it is.”
POPE COUNTY PREP
The eclipse totality capped months of preparation and a frantic day of anticipation, especially in Russellville.
Eclipse day in Pope County got off to a quiet start. A drive up Interstate 40 west, under a blue sky with only the faint white whispers of clouds, was like any other day. Traffic wasn’t a problem and no one seemed to be in a hurry.
However, once someone arrived in Russellville, it became clear the city of roughly 29,000 was in the direct path of the first total solar eclipse in Arkansas since 1918.
An O’Reilly Auto Parts on East Main Street declared its parking lot was for customers only.
Further down, a lot on the left was filled with tents for vendors selling eclipse-related merchandise.
Just before 8 a.m., the place to be wasn’t quite awake.
Commerce Avenue and other streets in downtown were closed off to traffic to make way for the festivities around the historic Missouri Pacific Depot.
Vendor tents sat unopened, waiting.
Businesses like Fat Daddy’s Bar-B-Que weren’t open for business yet, but declared their restrooms only open to customers.
Then at 7:59 a.m., a local radio station officially got the big day under way.
Over a PA system it began playing the unofficial theme song of the day — “Total Eclipse of the Heart” by Bonnie Tyler — for what probably would not be the last time.
At 9:30 a.m., Russellville Mayor Fred Teague and representatives of NASA held a news conference in front of the main stage to welcome people to the city.
“I just want you to know if you’re not from Russellville, we have been planning for the last 15 to 18 months for you to be here for this day,” Teague said. “We’re so glad you chose Russellville. We’re so glad to have this window to share our great community with you. We hope you enjoy our hospitality and leave all of your money here.”
The last person to speak was former astronaut Mike Massimino.
Massimino, who flew on two space shuttle flights and was the first person to post to Twitter from space, shared with the growing audience what it was like to space walk for the first time.
He closed out his time by addressing the eclipse itself and the profound impact he believed it would have on people gathering across the country to experience it together.
“I think what is really cool about what’s going to happen today, is we’re going to be reminded that we’re part of this (solar) system, with the sun, the moon, the stars and the other planets,” he said. “As we see the moon get into position and block out the sun totally, that’s a reminder of who we really are.
“We really are space travelers.”