NORTH TONAWANDA, N.Y. — Clouds may have covered the sky at Gratwick Park in North Tonawanda, but that didn’t ruin the solar eclipse trip for the Sherman family, who flew to WNY from LaGuardia Airport in NYC Monday morning.
Steve and Andrew Sherman decided two days ago that the total solar eclipse was something that they could not miss, both of them saying Monday’s spectacle more than lived up to expectations.
“Aside from my kids being born, that’s one of the most amazing things that I’ve ever seen,” Steve said. “We hadn’t seen the sun at all in the hours we’ve been here.”
“Then it just showed out of nowhere, it just showed… I was like ‘woah woah woah, look at that’,” Andrew said. “I got it all on video.”
The two natives of New City, NY, a hamlet just north of New York City, booked spur of the moment flights the same weekend as the eclipse and rented a car once they landed.
“Arrived to Buffalo [Monday morning], didn’t have a rental car plan, just rented a car,” Steve said.
RELATED: WATCH: The 2024 total solar eclipse from different sites across Western New York
Right after the eclipse ended, they stopped to talk to 7 News reporter Derek Heid and ran off to the airport to catch their 7 p.m. flight home.
“We’re going to get back to LaGuardia to get back home [Monday night],” Steve said. “We woke up in New City, and we’re going to go to sleep in New City.”
Luck drew them up north to watch the eclipse in North Tonawanda, they watched this once in a lifetime event side by side with NT residents.
“People tell you that total solar eclipses are nothing like [a partial eclipse] and they are correct, it is quite staggering,” Thomas Arida said.
“How dark it got, it was like midnight,” Carl Block said.
“The way things were when we got here, we didn’t think we’d see anything, but then the sun just peaked through,” Jim Guido said.
Just how dark does a total solar eclipse get?
— Derek Heid (@DerekHeid) April 8, 2024
Here's a 10 second Timelapse from my POV just an hour ago 🌕☀️ pic.twitter.com/tuVz3HTTEW
Both the NT residents and 7 News hope the Sherman’s made their flight home.
