5:05 p.m. ET, April 7, 2024
A certain kind of cloud will disappear during the eclipse
From CNN's Ayurella Horn-Muller
People watch the solar eclipse in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, on August 21, 2017.
John Sommers II/Reuters
It’s midday, and the sun is high in the sky, a natural cyan canvas peppered with puffy, cauliflower-shaped clouds. With little warning, the clouds cluttering the horizon start to vanish before your eyes. Not long after, the world begins to darken, as the sun disappears from view.
For the entirety of the eclipse,
the clouds will stay away.
That’s at least what scientists expect to take place in swaths of Mexico, Canada and the United States during
April 8’s total solar eclipse. If weather permits, those living in the 49 US states where a
partial eclipse is expected could also spot some clouds vanishing.
Here's why that is: During an eclipse, shallow cumulus clouds start dissipating in large proportions when only a fraction of the sun is covered, and they don’t reform until the end of the event, according to a
study published February 12 in the journal Nature Communications Earth & Environment. The research team found that cumulus clouds dissipate during eclipses because of the relationship between solar radiation and the formation processes of the clouds.
During an eclipse, the surface cools rapidly from the moon’s shadow blocking the sunlight, preventing warm air from rising from Earth’s surface — a core ingredient in the formation of cumulus clouds, according to Victor Trees, a doctoral candidate in the Netherlands who led the study. That rising air process leading to the
production of clouds usually takes roughly 15 to 20 minutes, according to simulations.
But this doesn’t mean your vantage point of the forthcoming
eclipse is guaranteed to be cloud-free as the research doesn’t apply to all clouds — only the shallow cumulus kind found hovering over land.