The Eclipse of 2024

As people in folding chairs or on the State House steps watched, a tiny nub of black appeared on the bottom of the disk of the sun and then the moon steadily covered the light until it was darker than dusk, lights shone in the surrounding state office buildings, and the crowd gasped and cheered.
Some people lingered, but in short order every road out of town that could reach the southbound entrance ramp of I-89 was jammed with out-of-state cars and a few Vermont drivers, inching their way home. It was a long wait just to get onto the Interstate. And then a multi-hour crawl for anybody to get anywhere to the south. Traffic was grid-locked on State Street, Memorial Drive, Bailey Avenue, Main Street, basically anywhere that could get you to I-89. The stalled bumper-to-bumper line on Elm Street went on for miles as people who had been in northern Vermont headed down Route 12 into the city. Eventually, like the eclipse, they were all gone. Click here for a gallery.