NIAGARA FALLS — The sun faded in and out of view from behind the clouds as totality loomed over the Horseshoe Falls.
While clear glimpses of the eclipse were few and far between, each time it became visible through breaks in the clouds, the sightings were met with more and more cheers from the crowd of thousands of visitors to Niagara Falls State Park.
“It was worth the trip,” said Jeff Teepe, exhibits coordinator at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
For several travelers, including Portugal native Miguel Santos and his family, being able to see the Falls for the first time held nearly equal excitement as experiencing the eclipse.
“We came to see Niagara Falls, the eclipse was a bonus,” he said.
Excitement from the audience ultimately culminated at about 3:18 p.m. as the daytime skies grew dark.
“The whole crowd was cheering as it got darker,” Virginia Beach resident Michael Kynett said moments after totality ended. “Suddenly, all these phones, you could see they lit up everywhere.”
Kynett traveled to watch the eclipse at the Falls with his wife Gail. She drew some comparisons to the 2017 total solar eclipse she witnessed in South Carolina.
“They were both wonderful. The first one was on a beach and there were high clouds, but they parted so we could still see totality,” she said. “And because we had such odds against us I think this one was more of a feeling of success.”
“You had a sea of optimists here because they knew the weather was going be bad but they were coming just to hope that maybe they could see it,” Michael Kynett added.
Some visitors, including Chaitanya Kasipally from Ohio, said he was “disappointed” when seeing the cloudy skies this morning, but he and his friends visiting together from numerous states said that being able to see some of the eclipse was a good experience.
The eclipse was also a culmination of the eclipse-related programming done by Jeff Teepe and 80 of his NASA colleagues in Niagara Falls over the weekend.
He said that while were very busy over the weekend, he expected an even larger influx of visitors on the day of the eclipse.
“I don’t know if that’s because of the weather or if we just underestimated how early people wanted to come and kind of stake out their spot here,” Teepe said.