Friday was a dry day. For the first time this week and the first time this month, it did not rain in Washington.
For Friday was only three days until the long-awaited eclipse, and if anything can prevent this free and wondrous natural phenomenon from being freely seen and wondered at, it is clouds.
So the question may well have occurred to many on Friday in particular: How much cloudiness could be countenanced before it imperiled the view?
Perhaps Friday, with its carefully characterized conditions, provided a partial answer.
At about 10 a.m., the National Weather Service termed the skies above the capital as partly cloudy. But for most of the succeeding hours of daylight, the Weather Service found it either mostly cloudy or overcast.
Yet it was probably not necessary to be an unswerving optimist to see the bright side of the day. Often Friday seemed sunny. It has many sunny moments, in which the city basked in brightness.
And even in the hours that could not in good conscience be called sunny and bright, it seemed possible that in places the clouds were just thin enough to allow the sun to be glimpsed behind them.
Nevertheless, given its frequent and clouded dimness, Friday might have served as a kind of atmospheric laboratory. It may have allowed a test of Monday’s opportunities for eclipse-watching in the D.C. area. The eclipse will not be total here, but only partial. But it still seems worth looking for.
At the peak of the eclipse, as it would be seen from D.C., at around 3:20 p.m., the moon will block out 87 percent of the face of the sun. That is about seven-eighths.
In its latest forecast for Monday’s sky cover, the Weather Service predicted that about half of the sky would be covered by cloud in Washington at about the time of maximum eclipse.
Friday may have suggested how much and how often Washington might see the sun on a day described as cloudy. Or on a day with about half the sky covered. And half not. Observing, it cannot be emphasized too often, only with proper eye-safety precautions.
Meanwhile, in terms of temperature Friday seemed a bit cool for this time in spring. The afternoon high temperature was 57 degrees. That was 7 below Washington’s average high for the fifth day of April.
It seemed just cool enough, in the wind, so that people who gave their winter coats one more go could expect to escape mockery.
On the day of the eclipse, predictions call for warmer weather.
