Hundreds of people gathered on the open spaces of Syracuse’s Thornden Park Monday afternoon to take in the spectacle of the total solar eclipse. Despite the cloud cover, there were windows of opportunity to watch the moon slowly obscure the sun. Bill Ohl and his wife Sarah Garza made the drive from New York City.
“We came up for our wedding anniversary," Bill said.
"Today is our wedding anniversary," Sarah chimed in. "So I've been calling it our eclipse-aversary.”
WAER’s Scott Willis watched the eclipse with Bill and Sarah, along with Bill’s brother Tim Ohl from Greene, near Binghamton. The clouds played hide and seek with the moon and sun, teasing the crowd in the final minutes before total coverage. Listen to the audio clip above for what they observed.
After the eclipse, the brothers say they were surprised by what they saw compared to a previous partial eclipse.
“It was cool, it was cool. But not where everything got dark. It wasn’t dark," they said. "That was really powerful. It's it was kind of freakier than you think it's going to be. I mean, I knew it was going to get dark, but it was like, really dark. But then looking out and seeing the sunset all the way around like it's circular, sunset was really powerful circle around us. I'm glad I came.”