by Paul LeFevre
My home in SF turned out to be a grand place to see the eclipse. About 18:50 the thin clouds that were making it "hazy" started moving North-East, and in opened up a nice clear patch. The air was pretty heavy with moisture, but I had no clouds from that time until the eclipse ended, when it was completely clear.
It was a nice show, with subtle yellow and coppery coloration on the shadowed face of the moon just before and during totality. Watching that last sliver of fully-lit moon disappear gave me a real itching to see the 2001 solar eclipse...
I shared the whole show with my neighbors, with the 6", 12.5", and binoculars all set up. A great time!
p.s. there was a very strange inversion layer in our neighborhood last night, that sat exactly 3 feet above the ground. There were a few smokers out eclipse watching with me, and if we were sitting down and blew out smoke, it would rise to 3 feet then form a flat plane of smoke spreading out horizontally but not vertically. Exhaling it at 4 ft. or above would let it drift up. Before long, we had an area about 50 sq. feet at 3 feet high looking like a sheet of plastic stretched out above the ground...it was strange to move your head below then above this "plane" where you could not see the other side. Weird :)