Drove 2 hours to Cherry Springs State Park and all I got was clouds

Waited for a clear weekend forecast all month finally got one last saturday. Packed up my telescope and camera gear at like 3pm drove 2 hours up to Cherry Springs in PA supposed to be one of the darkest spots on the east coast. Got there set everything up and within 30 minutes a wall of clouds rolled in from nowhere. I sat there for another hour hoping it would clear but nope just got colder and more annoyed. Saw at least 5 other people packing up too some guy said he drove from Philly for the same reason. Anyone else have a trip totally wrecked by unexpected cloud cover lately?

2 comments

2 Comments

gonzalez.vera1mo ago

Yeah man that sucks. I learned that the hard way too with Cherry Springs but honestly the real trick nobody talks about is checking the satellite cloud imagery for the whole region not just the weather app. Those apps show a sunny icon for your area but don't tell you that a massive lake effect band is sitting right over the park because it's in a weird valley. I started using the GOES satellite loops on the NOAA website and it saved me a ton of wasted trips.

jamieburns1mo ago

Man, that's the worst kind of betrayal - trusting a weather app like it's a real friend and getting burned. I swear @gonzalez.vera is onto something with those satellite loops because I wasted a whole weekend at a dark site in West Virginia before I figured out the same thing. Honestly at this point I think the clouds just know when you've got expensive gear in the car and coordinate their attack.