Total Lunar Eclipse Next Week

Here’s a look at the Moon slightly more than half illuminated as it descended through the clouds on the Western horizon this morning. Just in case you haven’t heard, there’s a total Lunar eclipse coming up on Wednesday morning, January 31st. It’s the first total lunar eclipse in our part of the world since September 2015.

As always, January is a sketchy month for seeing the night sky in Seattle. But there’s reason to have hope that we might see this one. Seattle will likely see a deluge this weekend into Monday as a system tapping into subtropical moisture dumps some significant rainfall.

However, by later Tuesday, the front responsible for this could be east of us with a cool upper level trough moving across western Washington. By this point, flow aloft in the atmosphere would be westerly. This could benefit the Seattle area with some rain shadowing courtesy of the Olympic mountains. During the period of total lunar eclipse (4:51 am to 6:08 am on Wednesday), the Moon would be low in the western sky where Olympic rain shadowing benefits us most.

There’s plenty of things that could change in the next few days with regards to forecast details, but the sight of a vivid red total lunar eclipse would be well worth getting up early to see and photograph!