After consulting the experts at the solar eclipse and authoritive organisations on line and they are very optimistic about this eclipse in north Queensland because this 2012 November total solar eclipse comes in the early stages of the wet season. The cloud cover is not as heavy as in the following months and there are good prospects for a sunny majestic day on the 14th.
Temperatures are warm – mornings range around the high 20s – and the humidity is typically high, around 80 percent at the expect eclipse time. Let's hope we have a morning sky like we did in 2008 when the sunrise photograph adjacent was taken from our Four Mile Beach at the same November time of the year.
The easterly trade wind flow over Queensland is complicated by the presence of the Great Dividing Range that lies tight against the coast around Port Douglas. The easterly Tradewinds push up against the Range, and, being forced to rise, bring a heavier cloudiness and precipitation to the seaward face than to the inland lee side.
Mountains are a risky places to watch an eclipse – especially mountains that are bathed in tropical rain. Cloud prospects are therefore far better along the coast, especially in the region between Cairns and Port Douglas. Cairns is on the inner edge of the southern outer limit of the eclipse so the nearer to the middle of Cairns and Port Douglas provides for a better 'total' eclipse. It's the same story for Mareeba and the Tablelands. Mareeba is in the centre of the Southern limit of the Eclipse path but Atherton and Tolga are right on the outer edge making the view of a total solar eclipse more unlikely.
You may have heard about the 'total' eclipse in China, in 2008, and might be interested to know that their eclipse was actually an annular eclipse and had a duration of 5 mins 46 seconds. This brings forward another question. What is a Total Solar Eclipse and what is an Annular Solar Eclipse? Our experts informed us that the difference between an annular and a total eclipse is an annular eclipse, occurs when the Sun and Moon are exactly in line, but the apparent size of the Moon is smaller than that of the Sun.
A total eclipse, as per the one in Far North Queensland, and you will experience in 2012, occurs when the sun is completely obscured by the Moon. The intensely bright disk of the sun is replaced by the dark silhouette of the Moon, and the much fainter corona is visible. During any total eclipse, totality is visible only from a most narrow track on the surface of the Earth, just like the one our exclusive locations are on!
Sources:
www.nasa.gov/eclipse
www.eclipser.ca
