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Total Eclipse Underway Across the U.S. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired August 21, 2017 - 13:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


[13:30:00] CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: We sent Stephanie Elam to St. Joseph, Missouri.

Stephanie, I'm sorry about that. You are getting the cloud cover. Still a chance for it to break up.

But that's where we're kind of covering things up, St. Jo to Marysville. South of St. Louis, there's traffic on the road getting out of St. Louis, trying to get to totality here. And back over towards Nashville, completely in the clear. Lots of clear skies and sunshine for the next four to five hours all the way to Knoxville. In great shape.

To the north of Athens, Georgia, a party at Stanford Stadium. Students with glasses on, looking about 98 percent. A cool party going on there. And then all the way across here to just about the Isle of Palms where have more reporters waiting in the wings for that shadow to get there.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: We have reporters across this map, all across the United States.

Chad, a lot of commercial aircraft, a lot of planes in the sky right now. How, if at all, does this total eclipse the path moving across the United States affect them?

MYERS: Well, it doesn't affect them, but they're not going to keep up. Because even, I was coming back from Vegas on saturday, we got a ground speed of about 575 miles per hour. You have to go three times faster than that to keep up with the shadow. Maybe a brief encounter with the shadow. Gets dark. Able to see the wing there's in the dark and the lights on the end of the wings shining like they do at night. Other than that, no real effect. Not going to be in that shadow long enough. One plane going one way at 500 miles an hour, have the shadow going the other at 1,500, you're not in the shadow very long -- Wolf?

BLITZER: And, David, you wanted to add?

DAVID DEVORKIN, SENIOR CURATOR, NATIONAL AIR & SPACE MUSEUM, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTE: Just the slightest increase in the amount of time you can see that corona. The Smithsonian has a crew on a jet plane going through the totality that is going to increase their ability to see the total corona for about a minute or two. It will see it maybe a total of four minutes, and that will give them so much more data than if they were just sitting on the ground, that it will be a terrific increase in our understanding of the processes that are going on just at the boundary of the visible surface of the sun and the inner atmosphere and the corona of the sun. And it's right there where we need to know so much more about how energy is transmitted. And during those four minutes, that will teach us a lot.

BLITZER: Looking at the eclipse. These are live pictures coming in from Hailey, Idaho, right now. It's 11:30 a.m. Mountain Time.

We're watching this very closely.

Stephanie Elam, you're in St. Joseph, Missouri. It's moving towards you. I assume where you are, folks are getting pretty excited.

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It would be, Wolf, it would be. Right now, we have rain.

BLITZER: That's too bad.

ELAM: That's not what we want. We can't see. We can't see right now.

This fine gentleman from Australia just walked over and brought an umbrella to help me out. I was standing here getting drenched.

Are you sad about choosing to come to St. Joseph, Missouri?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Absolutely not. We've had a fabulous time in the states. We've done a few astronomy trips here. We're having a great time. Clouds, nothing you can do about it.

ELAM: Do you think you'll get anything? We still have time.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have time. You never know. I've been to three before. They have been cloudy, fine. You never know what happens, so just --

(CROSSTALK)

ELAM: You've been to three others?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

ELAM: Are they all different?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All different.

ELAM: It's worth it for you?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Absolutely.

ELAM: See? See? For all those people who may be watching in Missouri, somewhere else, this 70-mile swath of land.

Thank you, kind sir, for your umbrella.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Pleasure. ELAM: This could still be really cool. Everyone says that the light changes, and to look to the side, and to around at the environment around you. The temperature should still change. We still have things we can look for. Even if Miguel has the coolest stuff ever, Wolf, over there on the coast, that's totally fine. We are going to sit here and we still have about, oh, about half an hour to go before we reach totality here. And hopefully, it will still be good. People here are still excited to be here, even though now you see people are covered up completely in their rain ponchos. This lady has a stool over her camera. She's also from Australia, has made the trek. She's protecting her camera gear. Plastic bags, ponchos, rain boots, you know, this is how we're eclipses here in Missouri right now, Wolf. So hopefully, it will get a little better as we are getting closer to totality here.

BLITZER: You still have a half hour in Idaho. We hope it clears and that rain goes away. The clouds go away, let's hope, in the next half hour. And folks are taking it in good spirit.

David, it's got to be disappointing. He traveled all the way from Australia to the United States to watch this historic moment, a total eclipse of the sun, and all of a sudden, the clouds and the rain come.

DEVORKIN: There's some wonderful stories that turn them almost into spiritual journeys that are just so emotionally encapsulating of the effort, the fascination that, even if there were clouds, there was still that effort, a combined effort to see something truly spectacular. And I know it sound funny, almost counterintuitive, but I know that some people when they have traveled so far, but they've not seen it, they feel it is an absolute imperative to try again. That gives hope, that gives meaning to life.

BLITZER: Chad, let me -- you're a weather guy. What's the weather like as this total eclipse moves across the United States from Oregon to Idaho, Missouri, and heading your way? It's heading towards South Carolina.

Chad, I want you to stand by for a moment. We'll get that forecast from you to see what the weather's going to be like.

Oh, there you are, Chad.

What's it going to be like? The weather, moving towards you?

MYERS: Really, we couldn't have put Stephanie in any worse of a position or that man from Australia. Really, that's the only place in totality we have no visibility whatsoever.

Move you around here. Back out to the west. This is where it really is good. All the way from Casper, Wyoming through Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton Forest, that's where it's perfect. And then you get into the plains where these lingering storms from last night are still around. So Lincoln, Nebraska, Omaha, seeing cloud cover. But remember this, we talked about this an hour ago, Wolf. When the clouds move away, and they can, when the sun gets blocked, temperatures go down. The clouds are here because the temperatures have gone up. These are king of cumulus clouds. If the temperature goes down quick enough, the clouds can actually go away and you can have a brief glimpse of the sun, the eclipse, even with rainfall coming in there. Keeping fingers crossed for Stephanie.

Back down to Nashville, perfect. Knoxville, again, perfect. All the way through the Great Smoky Mountains, perfect. Into Charleston, rain showers coming in now. Hoping for Charleston to get a sea breeze. A sea breeze, when you take that wind from the ocean and you push the clouds inward. Sorry, if you're 40 miles inland, because you'll get cloudy. But Charleston could still break out. So could the Isle of Palms and all the way down to almost Savannah, Georgia -- Wolf?

BLITZER: It's going to take another hour or two for the total eclipse to move all across the country. Right, Chad?

MYERS: Absolutely right. We won't get out of the partial eclipse. We talk about that moment of totality, and that's where it's dark. It's 2.5 minutes of nirvana right there. But the rest of it, it's the leadup. It's the journey to get there. And then the journey on the way out when the sun comes back out. It all kind of -- you get to Disneyland, trying to get to, but if you have a good enough trip, getting to Disneyland may be part of the story. It's the leadup, the anticipation. It's the cloud cheering.

When I was listening to Miguel Marquez' shot from Salem, and the crowd behind him, they were just roaring as this was getting closer and closer and closer. It was like you were at a football game, not at some kind of solar eclipse. Football games happen all the time. Solar eclipses don't.

BLITZER: Moving across the United States. First time since 1918. 99 years folks waited for this moment.

Chris Hadfield, I want to get your thoughts on why it is so powerful, so emotional, so spiritual for folks who actually see it?

CHRIS HADFIELD, RETIRED U.S. ASTRONAUT: You know, through history, Wolf, we've named the things in the sky with a sense of wonder. We named the planets after the gods from thousands of years ago. When those first eclipses happened, it was a terrifying, unbelievable, unpredictable event, our god somehow angry at us. As the science of physics explains what's going on, it becomes more palatable to us intellectually. But that same fundamental sense of wonder is there. The crew of the space station right now is just south of Australia. But it's only going to take them about a half hour to be back over the United States, across the Pacific. And they will then have a chance as they arc across the United States to look for that shadow crossing across. The Kentucky and Tennessee, they have the longest periods of totality. Where the shadow slows down the most. They get over 2.5 minutes of totality. And around that time is when the six people up on the space station, they'll be taking pictures like crazy, but they'll be feeling that same sense of ancient wonder that eclipses instilled in all of us forever.

BLITZER: Those six astronauts, Chad, will have a totally unique vantage point, view of this eclipse as it moves across the United States. And as you've been saying, and saying very, very important, that they're going to be able to glean important scientific information from this.

But once again, explain to viewers what kind of scientific information the best scientific information will they be able to obtain?

[13:39:54] MYERS: It's looking at the corona, Wolf. It's looking when you get totality, it's the view you can't get any other time. Yes, you can put a disc in the way of the sun and get a man-made partial eclipse and try to get a reading from that. But when you take a body, not just a piece of plastic, and you don't block it with a piece of plastic in front of the scope, you block it with a body of rock way out there in space, you get a much clearer view. The edges are much clearer. Although, of course, there are the craters on the moon. The edges of that corona. The prominences we saw, they were amazing. Three of them. One to the north, one to the northeast, and one to the east itself, looking at it from northeast to south. But the prominences that we could see there. These explosions from the sun. These coronal mass ejections, we night get to see one if there's something small that puffs out here. These are the things that can affect the world in the future. And the more we know about them, the more we can protect the world from electromagnetic storms, from brownouts and blackouts because of this power coming from the sun itself. The more we know, the better we can prepare. The better we can prepare, we can do and cause less damage to our infrastructure when it happens. There is going to be a coronal mass ejection that flies to the earth at some point in time in probably my lifetime and yours, too. That will affect the earth. A lot of times go one way because it's three dimensional. Could go back behind the sun. But if one shoots right at the world, all of a sudden, there's going to be this charged of the world, not only north lights, but also our power grids get charged. Computers get charged. Things go down and crash. And things go bump in the night. And there could be billions of dollars in damage that we could maybe alleviate if we know more about how to get our systems down, how quickly it moves, what frequency things are coming in, what speed they're coming in. There's just so much that the world depends on -- that cell phone of yours. This cell phone could launch the Atlas 5 rocket of years' past, because it's so technically advanced. All that technology is now at some point going to tumble down if we get too much electromagnetic from the sun.

BLITZER: All right. Chad, look at this. Right part of the screen, Casper, Wyoming.

David, about to have a total eclipse there. You see the camera moving a bit. Explain what we're about to see in Casper, Wyoming, as oppose to Hailey, Idaho.

DEVORKIN: In Hailey, Idaho, the eclipse is getting larger because it's after totality. But in Casper, Wyoming, it's just before. Sort of, think of the crescent as smile, getting narrower and narrower and amazing at this point, and it's gone.

BLITZER: There it is. Total eclipse in Casper, Wyoming.

DEVORKIN: At this point, it they take the filters off the camera, they will see the corona.

BLITZER: You see it. You see it. There it is.

DEVORKIN: There you go.

BLITZER: Yes. Explain why that corona now has appeared?

DEVORKIN: The corona is very, very faint relative to the rest of the sun. So even though it's always there, we can't see it, because we're blinded by sunlight. That would be true on the ground, be true in space, true anywhere. But once that corona is cut off by that occulting disc, the moon, that's a quarter-million-miles away, as was correctly pointed out there, the very sharp limb between the moon's limb there and the sun being exactly the same size, let's us only see the faint light that is in the outer atmosphere of the sun. That is what we're seeing now. The key of a total solar eclipse is we can see the whole corona. In artificial eclipses and others, we only see the outer corona. But here, we can the inner corona where the really important processes are taking place.

BLITZER: This total eclipse will last in Casper, Wyoming, about two minutes, 2.5 minutes.

DEVORKIN: That's right.

BLITZER: Then slowly, all of a sudden, the sun re-appears?

DEVORKIN: Exactly right. It will re-appear quickly in that, what's called a Bailey's Bead, the bright portion of the sun coming back. And even the contrast is so great it overpowers the corona. That's all you see. It's sort of like a diamond ring effect, it's called.

BLITZER: So if you're on the ground now in Casper, Wyoming, it's dark.

DEVORKIN: Oh, yes, yes.

BLITZER: You might get confused and think it's nighttime?

DEVORKIN: Well, I mean, if I was a burrowing creature, I'd start looking, where am I supposed to be going now?

BLITZER: The animals will get confused on what's going on.

DEVORKIN: Definitely.

BLITZER: I guess we could reassure the animals that this is the first time a total eclipse path like this has gone across the United States in 99 years.

DEVORKIN: Exactly.

BLITZER: Since 1918, the last time. But other last total eclipses, but not completely across the United States.

DEVORKIN: Exactly right. BLITZER: This is a moment we're watching, this total eclipse. This

is in Casper, Wyoming. Shortly -- we'll keep this picture up for viewers. Tell our viewers what to anticipate.

[13:45:02] DEVORKIN: At this point, with the sun just now coming -- there it goes.

BLITZER: There it is.

DEVORKIN: That's the bead. There's the diamond-ring effect. And now, of course, that's overexposing. Put the filter back on. That's right. They're doing it right.

BLITZER: Doing the filter.

DEVORKIN: Yes. Whoops. Got to get that filter on. Yes. I hope they didn't burn off pixels in the camera.

BLITZER: Yes. That sunlight is very, very intense.

DEVORKIN: Absolutely.

BLITZER: Got to be really careful. Have a lot of filters.

DEVORKIN: Yes. There we go.

BLITZER: Here it comes. All of a sudden, the sun will come back out.

DEVORKIN: That's right.

And people all across the eclipse path from west to east are seeing this in sequence. Just an incredible thing to realize. So many millions of people are able to see this.

When we were in Libya, we were -- in 2006, the desert was empty, except for about 1,500 crazy people yelling and screaming at the top of their heads.

BLITZER: The Libyan government at the time of Moammar Gadhafi allow you in.

MYERS: They allowed an Italian cruise ship in and we were on a cruise, part of that that was sponsored and directed by a magazine called "Sky and Telescope." But it was an Italian cruise ship.

BLITZER: Let me get Chris Hadfield to weigh in as well.

What do you think, Chris?

HADFIELD: Oh, it's just so magnificent to see something we haven't talked about, Wolf, and that is just as the sun is disappearing behind the moon, and then just as it's re-appearing, as the first hint of that light is coming down, the light can get sort of bent a little bit through the atmosphere. Sort of like how stars twinkle. If you look under just the right conditions, you can see these big wavy bands of light on the ground. Not always. But if you're in the right place, you can see those, like snakes of light slivering across the ground. I'm curious to see if any of the people across the country got the right combination of everything so they got see that extremely rare and bizarre effect from a total solar eclipse.

BLITZER: Saw that in Casper, Wyoming. Moving now closer to Nebraska, Beatrice, Nebraska. Live pictures from there as well.

We have a lot more special coverage coming up. We need to take a quick break. Unfortunately, Beatrice, Nebraska, looks cloudy now. But we have cameras all over the country as this total eclipse moves across the country from Oregon, to Idaho, to Nebraska, moving towards South Carolina.

Our special coverage continues right after this quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:50:52] BLITZER: Looking at live pictures coming in right now from Missouri, Blackwell, Sinclair, where in a few minutes the skies will go completely dark, as the moon eclipses the sun.

Welcome back to our special coverage. I'm Wolf Blitzer, in Washington.

Also joining us is Chad Myers, Stephanie Elam, Kaylee Hartung and David DeVorkin, Chris Hadfield.

Chad, what's happening now? Where is this total eclipse?

MYERS: We just lost totality over Casper, north of Cheyenne, almost into Scottsbluff, nebraska, Grand Island, Wood River, Aurora, back towards Lincoln, Nebraska, then finally sliding off into Missouri. We're right in this area where you're starting to gain more in the way of eclipse and starting to lose the eclipse back out here.

In the middle part of the country, that's where we're seeing the rain showers. This was an absolutely perfect place to be for the eclipse. This not so perfect. The showers popped up in the warmer part of the morning and they're hanging around. We'll get to Stephanie in a bit.

If you're in Nashville, one of the biggest parties in America is going on right now. Perfect weather there. Knoxville, back on over to about Columbia, South Carolina, eventually into Charleston, this is a beautiful swath of no cloud cover, and then finally, towards the shore, that's where the rain is back. There are so many people right now, Isle of Palms, Charleston, to the north of Savannah, just south of Myrtle Beach, being disappointed by the rainfall. They have an hour to make that go away. Sometimes the sea breeze can make it go away, Wolf, but we'll have to see.

One thing I want you to notice, if you're in Central Park, if you're in Chicago, if you're in Dallas, if you're getting part of the solar eclipse, I want you to look down under a tree, and I want you to notice that everywhere there should be a little circle of sun, that should be the sun, there will be a crescent shape there. All these pinhole cameras we tell you to make, every place there's a pinhole in a tree between the leaves, every one of those shadows will be in the shape of a crescent. Pretty cool.

BLITZER: Very cool, indeed.

Stephanie, you're in St. Joseph, Missouri. There were weather issues. How is it holding up?

ELAM: It's not. You just have to laugh about it at this point, Wolf, because it is coming down now. Our non-fearful Australian friends, let's go back and talk to them.

You've been to more than one eclipse, right?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

BLITZER: There are a lot of people leaving here now, even though we still have about 15 minutes to go until we hit totality. Are they being premature?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think they are. Part of this eclipse experience is experiencing totality where things go quiet, animals go away, people get really excited. It's quite an event in itself.

ELAM: Even though -- I mean, it looks like we won't get any breakthrough of the clouds, it looks pretty covered up, you still think it's worth being here?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, definitely. Wouldn't miss it.

ELAM: How in advance did you plan your trip?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Probably about 18 months.

ELAM: Eight or nine months?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, 18 months.

ELAM: Eighteen months, even worse.

(CROSSTALK)

ELAM: OK, so 18 months in advance you planned to be here in this field in St. Joseph, Missouri, where it's down pouring.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Correct. Yes.

ELAM: According to Chad Myers, this is the worst place we could have chosen to be based on the weather, not on location.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When we did the planning, we based it on the statistical weather data, which showed this is a good place to be this time of the year normally.

ELAM: But you still are hopeful for a good eclipse?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Definitely. We won't see it, but we'll feel it and experience. It will go dark. So it will be great. ELAM: If that optimism does not inspire you, Wolf, he is still optimistic, even though we're standing here in the rain pretty much wet from the top, down.

BLITZER: A very good man, indeed. I'm glad he made the trip over from Australia because he's inspiring all of us.

Stand by.

Kaylee Hartung, Kaylee, you're in South Carolina for us, Isle of Palms. You're getting ready to experience a total eclipse of the sun. What's it like?

[13:55:07] KAYLEE HARTUNG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We are, Wolf. We are staying dry. Just hearing Chad talk about the rainfall that some parts of the South Carolina coast are experiencing, we are staying dry here for now. Though the sun is covered in clouds. If you put on your glasses and look up, you can begin to see the eclipse taking shape. And we're seeing this sand sculpture take shape, we told about earlier. Five hours of work by a local architecture film. But this sculpture has come together.

I want to bring in Norma Jean Paige, who has organized the big event that Isle of Palms has been experiencing.

Norma, how long has planning for this day been under way?

NORMA JEAN PAIGE, ORGANIZED ISLE OF PALM ECLIPSE EVENT: We've been planning over a year, not knowing what to anticipate. But it's been a fun ride. We've enjoyed it. We're excited about today. The crowds are probably the biggest we've had in a long time, similar to Fourth of July, but larger. So it's been fun.

HARTUNG: We will all be standing by for 2:46 p.m. Eastern, Wolf, when everyone in Isle of Palms is expected to experience that total eclipse.

BLITZER: Less than an hour from now.

We'll be watching it every step of the way.

Chris Hadfield is still with us, joining us from Brisbane, Australia right now. He's a U.S. astronaut, a former commander of the international space station.

This is a moment that folks like you wait for all the time, Chris, because it is so powerful and, indeed, shall I say emotional?

HADFIELD: The entire experience of leaving earth and flying a spaceship is very technical, very difficult, but it's also immensely personal, Wolf. For the six crew, up on the space station, they are right overhead Fiji right at this moment, racing across the Pacific. I know that all 12 of their eyes, all six of them have their eyes staring straight ahead in order to see as the shadow is crossing across the U.S. They'll make landfall in about 15, 20 minutes, and will have every camera they can get, every sensor, so they can get as much science out of possible, but not to miss the personal experience of seeing something so rare, so ethereal.

BLITZER: It's a major moment. Everybody who goes through it feels that personal touch.

David DeVorkin, you felt it several times. I can see, you're sitting next to me, you're feeling it right now.

DEVORKIN: Absolutely. I did go to an eclipse, an annular eclipse, when the moon is a little too far away so it's diameter is smaller than the sun and so you get a complete ring. We went down to Richmond, Virginia, there was supposed to be one at the Berkeley Plantation, south of there. We sat out the Berkeley Plantation, and it was cloudy, completely. But it still darkened. We got that darkening. We walked away from there, though, and I had the best fried chicken I ever had.

(LAUGHTER)

BLITZER: After you saw -- what was the name of that?

DEVORKIN: Annular eclipse.

BLITZER: An annular eclipse.

DEVORKIN: I used to think, when I was a kid, it was annual eclipse. And why doesn't it happen every year. But, no, it's annular.

BLITZER: We've waited 99 years for this total eclipse to move all across the United States, from Oregon, through the Midwest, down to South Carolina. Do we know when the next time this will occur, when we will see this kind of total eclipse over across the United States?

DEVORKIN: Absolutely, 2024.

BLITZER: That's pretty close. Not that far away.

DEVORKIN: It's really very close. In fact, Carbondale, Illinois, will see it again, because it's totality in both of the paths. The next one will go from the southwest to the northeast, starting in Texas, ending in Maine. It will be just as spectacular, in fact, even a little longer because.

BLITZER: Longer, what does that mean?

DEVORKIN: That means the moon is a little closer to the earth -

BLITZER: So instead of 2.5 minutes, it might be three minutes?

DEVORKIN: That's right.

BLITZER: That could make a big difference.

DEVORKIN: Yes, absolutely.

BLITZER: Tell us why. DEVORKIN: The more time you have to watch this eclipse using your

scientific instruments, of course, the more data you can collect. Also, the sun is such a dynamic engine that it's changing every tenth of a second. And looking at those processes in detail during those short periods of time can be extremely valuable. For the rest of us, just ever second of this experience is indelible.

BLITZER: People are already gearing up for that next eclipse, 2024?

DEVORKIN: I know some of my colleagues are already talking about where are they going to start, in Texas or Maine?

BLITZER: Well, that's it for me. I'm going to end our coverage for now. But we won't leave our coverage. Anderson Cooper is sticking around. I will leave Anderson with this challenge.

Anderson, you can see my solar eclipse lenses right here. I want to see what they look like on you as well.

Anderson Cooper picks up our special eclipse coverage right now.

[14:00:07] ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Wolf, thanks very much.

I'm Anderson Cooper. This is CNN's continuing coverage of the historic event, the day the sun disappeared.