Eclipse Flight: April 8, 2024

On April 8, 2024, the perfect conditions converged for a rare occurrence: a midday balloon flight. The wind stayed light throughout the day, and an overcast sky prevented thermals and turbulence from developing. Of course, that overcast obscured the main event of the day: the total solar eclipse that had been highly anticipated for many months, especially in the path of totality (complete coverage of the sun). Western New York was directly in that path. Several weeks prior to the eclipse’s arrival, as hype was becoming ubiquitous, I first had the idea of trying to pull off a flight during the eclipse.

But early April in western New York is well before our flying season gets underway, and we often don’t even have our balloons ready to fly yet. Springtime is usually rainy, and the fields where we take off and land are muddy and unfriendly to balloon fabric and heavy chase vehicles. No one wants to get stuck in the mud retrieving a soggy balloon.

As the day of the eclipse drew nearer, the extended forecasts began to indicate that the weather just might break our way, My buddy Kevin Raymond and I readied our balloons, called photographers, and extended invitations to a few family and friends. We told them all “This probably isn’t actually going to work, so don’t get your hopes up, BUT JUST IN CASE…”

To avoid the large crowds gathering at Letchworth which would potentially pose a problem for our chase crew, we accepted an invitation from Camp Cherith to launch from their grounds, just outside the Letchworth Park borders. The morning brought a passing sprinkle, but the radar showed clearing behind so we weren’t too worried about the rain.

We arrived at the camp early to watch the weather, get the balloons set up and ready to inflate well ahead of time, and then sit around in camp chairs, munch on some snacks and plot out a flight strategy. Joe wanted to be at an angle where he could look up at my balloon from Kevin’s basket in hopes of capturing the sun and moon behind my balloon. He had a bag full of fancy lenses and filters, and kept muttering photographer stuff to himself. Something about exposures and apertures or something.

We decided Kevin would take off first and climb, catch the turn toward the east and I would follow and climb higher, attempting to stay above him and to the west, roughly in the area the sun would be in the sky. This turned out to be much trickier than we anticipated, as the speed of the wind increased quickly as we climbed, and the turn was more pronounced than forecast. But even as we maneuvered, we were realizing that the sky was getting grayer and thicker, and we probably weren’t even going to be able to see the sun/moon at all. So, we kind of gave up maneuvering and just decided to keep climbing and get as high as we could without getting into the clouds. At around 7,500’, we leveled out and waited.

At first, the sky to the west just looked gloomy. We were so high we could see the gray waters of Lake Erie in the distance beyond the Buffalo skyline. I wondered briefly if we would end up flying in the rain after all.

But we gradually realized that gloominess was not a rain shower: it was indeed the vast shadow of the moon approaching at incredible speed. People told us later that on the ground it just got suddenly really dark. But at our altitude, we could see it coming from 150 miles away. The physical darkness that soon enveloped us was accompanied by a peculiar coldness, silent and windless.

*Hello darkness my old friend…

As the shadows deepened and lights began to flicker on far below us, the excitement and anticipation of the previous days and weeks gave way to the deepest awe I have ever felt. We were suspended a mile and a half in the air, and the sea of daytime blackness had embraced us. Waves of emotion welled up as we together felt the moon passing overhead. As a pilot, I have spent my entire flying career avoiding getting caught aloft in the dark, and now I had done it on purpose!

My daughter captured our reactions in this video.

Once the darkness began to lift, I pried my mind and emotions back toward being a pilot. As much as I wanted to linger in the moment, basking in the awesomeness of what we had just experienced, there was the business of descending under control from almost 8,000’ and landing safely that I had to attend to. I looked around to get my bearings and I realized we were heading almost directly toward our home, over 20 miles from our launch site.

Much of the rest of our family was there watching us. Since the clouds had obscured their view of the actual eclipse, everyone looking to the sky could clearly see the two balloons flickering against the black canopy above. Awe gave way to renewed excitement as we descended toward our people, and they dashed from watching us from the porch to piling into chase vehicles to meet us as we approached a landing site in a field just down the road from our house.

The scene was exultant as family, friends and neighbors came charging out into the field to greet us. High fives and giddy laughter prevailed as we celebrated a kickoff to a flying season like none I have ever experienced before.

This is my favorite photo from the flight. Joe Serio captured this during the darkest moments of the totality. I was using the glow burners (burners that produce tremendous light, but not much heat compared to the main burners) to light up the once it got dark, and he timed the shot perfectly. Afterward, he told me he had to completely change his camera setup on the fly, and he was in a bit of a panic that after all this planning he would end up empty handed. He had spent days carefully planning to shoot into bright eclipse sunlight, with special filters and settings to block out the harmful light from the corona. But then…no sun, no corona, just darkness!

*From the moment I first dreamed of flying during the eclipse, I knew that if we were in the air during totality I wanted to hear this song playing. “The Sound of Silence” covered by Disturbed. If you haven’t already heard it, it’s worth a listen.