TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — The longest partial lunar eclipse in nearly 600 years will take place early Friday morning – but will the weather allow us to see it in Tampa Bay?
According to NASA, up to about 99 percent of the moon’s disk will be within the darkest part of the Earth’s shadow – known as the umbra – overnight, making it an “almost total” lunar eclipse. During the eclipse, the moon will appear a reddish-orange color.
The full moon will start to eclipse around 2:19 a.m. EST Friday, according to NASA, but the red coloring won’t be visible until about 3:45 a.m. when more than 95 percent of the moon is in the umbra. The eclipse peaks at 4:03 a.m. – which is the best time to see the red color. The red color will fade at 4:20 a.m., and the eclipse will be over at 5:47 a.m.
Unfortunately for stargazers in the Tampa Bay area, it’s expected to stay cloudy through Thursday night and into early Friday morning when the eclipse is happening.
If you still want to see the eclipse, you can watch it in the player below.
“I do think the clouds are going to stick around. I don’t like to deliver bad news on occasions like this but it does look like we’ll have some pretty thick cloud cover across the entire state of Florida throughout the overnight hours,” Max Defender 8 Meteorologist Amanda Holly said. “Will there be breaks in the clouds? Yes, but it’s really hard to say if those breaks will occur during the lunar eclipse and if the breaks will occur where the moon is.”
Friday morning’s eclipse will be the last lunar eclipse of 2021.
