To remember that it didn’t really get dark in the 1999 eclipse?

[powercats]

I was 14, in South Wales. If you look at the news coverage and videos recorded in 1999 it seems to get as dark as night. But I don’t remember that at all - the sky was still blue, it just went dim, like it would in heavy rain or as if it was 6pm instead of 11am.

Is this how other people remember it?

I remember it well. My BF at the time was in IT as we're all his friends. They hired a boat and we went out into the English channel for the eclipse.

It got very very dim but not pitch black. What I remember most is how cold it suddenly got and how choppy the water became. It really scared us all for a moment. Thought, this is it ! Such an amazing and spooky experience.

I was in south cornwall. It went dark as night and the coast was lit up like stars with thousands of people that hadn't turned the flash off on their cameras. Very pretty.

Very dark in Sussex. It was quite strange and apart from all the birds not singing, it went quite cold, the drop in temps was odd.

I think the exciting thing is not how dark it is per se but to see the moon covering the sun

I was on the South Coast but not in the zone of totality. (I hadn't gone there specially for the eclipse I was visiting family). It was well over 99% but it did not get dark. It was kind of spooky and cold. I do remember people were going out in boats to catch the totality though.

The sun is very bright! Even a fee percentage points of its brilliance is still very bright.
I was in Yorkshire in 1999 too and it was very underwhelming.

Hell if I was in an area of 99% coverage I would relocate to see the totality.

I have seen two total eclipses and both were amazing.

Why are you not travelling ? Have you seen one before ?

Very underwhelming in Wigan in '99.

I was in Cambridge and it was more like dusk than the middle of the night.
I was prepared for the darkness, but hadn't considered how quiet it would go due to the birds thinking it was night time. I remember that more than the dark.
I also collected DS1 from the on site nursery just to be able to say he experienced it. He was 6 months old!

I was S London/Surrey border and remember going into the office car park. It definitely went dark enough for the car park lights to come on. It was cold and very quiet too - no birds.

Yes very dark for us in Cornwall, hoping for similar today in Devon.

It was quite dark in Dorset. I was working in a nursery and we took the children outside, with strict instructions not to look up. 😁
Remember it getting quite eerie.

I was in Northern Ireland so it didn't do much but I seem to remember it was in a Eastenders episode or did I imagine that?

I was 11, in the West Midlands. Didn’t really get dark for me either. I was at a drama camp and we had all made glasses for the purpose of looking at it, but there wasn’t really anything to see, it was like a 5oclock darkness then straight back to sunlight again. Bit boring and bloody pointless when we were supposed to be putting together a show and needed the rehearsal time were my thoughts! 🤣

Dark where i was in south Devon. birds all went quiet and then as light returned we got the second dawn chorus.

I remember it. I was in central London at work. We all went out w our glasses and it went a bit dusky, birds stopped singing and that was it 😝 it was cloudy though which didn’t help.

It got a bit darker and eerie in north essex

North London, I was sitting on the garden wall talking to a neighbour who’d stopped to admire the cat (gorgeous ginger tom) and it got vaguely dim, nothing like night time.

I remember it well. I was in Bristol. It went dark'ish like it was early evening instead of midday. I remember the street lights came on, all the birds stopped singing and it went chilly and very quiet. It was quite eerie and unsettling but not totally dark.

Quite dark and I remember looking down (we were standing on top of a hill) and all the street lights came on in the city below.

Dark for me and chilly - I was a student midwife doing house calls in Portsmouth

We were in the area of totality, and I was amazed at how undark it was except during the period of total eclipse. Even when there was just a tiny sliver of sun showing, it was still light and didn't really look that different.

The moment of the total eclipse was very special though, very weird. It got noticeably darker, but I agree it wasn't pitch dark like night time dark.

I think the partial eclipse might be a bit of an anti climax and I don't really want to be looking at the sun. Last time DH set up some weird system so we could see it on a screen, but it was cloudy anyway.

It got slightly overcast in Nottinghamshire.

Exactly x

I was in Cambridge with then-BF-now-DH, it got vaguely dusk-like or perhaps more like a grey overcast day. We did notice the birds sort of went a bit quieter and then resumed, but nothing dramatic. We had prepared all sorts of eclipse-viewing contraptions so were focused on looking through those.

DH has brand new telescope with sun filter, so 2026 will be even more exciting!