{"id":995294,"date":"2026-08-12T03:15:30","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T03:15:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/995294\/"},"modified":"2026-08-12T03:15:30","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T03:15:30","slug":"its-the-worst-country-to-watch-an-eclipse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/995294\/","title":{"rendered":"‘It’s the Worst Country to Watch an Eclipse’"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n Eclipse fans are flocking to one of the best places on Earth to see Wednesday’s total solar eclipse, but Iceland’s weather may not cooperate. Thick clouds and rain are in the forecast, prompting many locals and visitors to treat the event like a weather lottery: wake up, check the sky, and then drive wherever looks clearest, reports the New York Times<\/a>. “It’s the worst country to watch an eclipse,” says Margret Brynjolfsdottir, who still plans to watch from home in the country’s northwest, clouds or not. The path of totality<\/a> on Wednesday will include eastern Greenland, western Iceland, and northern Spain. \n <\/p>\n


\n In Iceland’s remote Westfjords, darkness will linger for close to two minutes, longer than anywhere else in Iceland, but infrastructure is sparse. Hotels and Airbnbs sold out years ago, some at many times their usual rates. Police, road crews, and telecom companies have been grading gravel roads, boosting cell coverage, and deploying every available portable toilet to the region, the Times reports. \n <\/p>\n


\n Hotelier Birna Mjoll Atladottir, whose property sits near prime viewing cliffs, has stocked a month’s worth of food and cleared fields for campers\u2014but has no idea whether she’ll see a few hundred people or a few thousand. She says she thought it was a joke when she received her first booking for this Wednesday 14 years ago. Amateur astronomer Diego Ragnar Angemi, a Westfjords resident, says he plans to search for a spot with clear skies. “The Icelandic weather doesn’t really allow you to make plans ahead of time,” he says. In Spain, meanwhile, police plan to deploy 35,000 officers to prevent the influx of visitors from sparking wildfires, the Guardian<\/a> reports. \n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Eclipse fans are flocking to one of the best places on Earth to see Wednesday’s total solar…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":995295,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[109111,24920,50,71660,103],"class_list":["post-995294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-eclipse","tag-iceland","tag-news","tag-solar-eclipse","tag-world"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117080367395511045","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/995294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=995294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/995294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/995295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=995294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=995294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=995294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}