Will the eclipse be eclipsed by the smoke?

With the Great American Eclipse heading straight for Idaho, residents are beginning to wonder if all the smoke in the air will prevent people from being able to clearly look upon the historic event.

From our vantage point here in Shoshone County, we will only privy to 90 percent of the total solar eclipse, but that 90 percent would still be sufficient enough for us to take part in the this historic event.

In some places, visibility from the smoke has been reduced to less than two miles, which definitely is not enough to get a clean look on the eclipse.

In an interview with the Idaho Statesman, Les Colin, lead forecaster with the National Weather Service in Boise was fairly blunt about how the low visibility could affect being able to see the eclipse.

“It’s simply too far out,” Colin said.

But our fortunes may have changed with the storm that blew through the area over the weekend.

As of Monday morning, the skies were clear and blue, which is a definite improvement over what the area had been experiencing over the past few weeks and if the fires can continue to be contained over the next week there may be hope for full visibility.

Viewers are still urged to not try to look directly at the eclipse without proper eye protection.

The shadow will take an hour and a half to cross the country, hitting Coeur d’Alene at 9:13 a.m., with 90 percent of the sun covered by 10:28 a.m., and ending at 11:48 a.m., so Shoshone County should expect the event to begin a few minutes sooner than Coeur d’Alene’s estimated time.

The Kellogg Public Library will be handing out free eclipse glasses to spectators at Odd Fellows Covering in the Kellogg City Park.

Silver Mountain will be offering a viewing of the eclipse from the top of the mountain for only the cost of a Gondola ticket and the first 150 people will receive free eclipse tickets.

The August 2017 eclipse will be the first with a path of totality crossing the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of the U.S. since 1918 and its path of totality makes landfall exclusively within the United States, making it the first such eclipse since the country's independence in 1776 and there won’t be another one like it until August of 2045.

No matter what happens though, the eclipse will still provide local residents with something memorable.

Smoke or no smoke.