Eclipse day was sunny in Indiana. Where were the crowds?

Where were all the expected eclipse visitors?

While the total eclipse proved spectacular for many who witnessed it, eclipse tourism in Bloomington and other Indiana cities and towns fell far short of projections.

Instead of traffic jams, local streets showed, for much of the day, less traffic than on a normal weekday. Instead of a shortage of parking spots, the availability of parking even in downtown Bloomington exceeded expectations.

Smaller than expected crowds, no traffic

Instead of 300,000 spectators, as multiple officials projected, Bloomington saw tens of thousands, according to early estimates. And while the smaller-than-expected crowds enabled the city to escape snarled traffic, the overestimates also kept some Bloomington residents from leaving their homes and attending the local events, from Switchyard Park to Memorial Stadium.

How it happened: The H-T's live blog from eclipse day

City and tourism leaders said they prepared for large crowds just in case, and those who made the trip weren’t disappointed.

“The point of pride here is that Bloomington and our partners were ready for whatever the day brought,” Deputy Mayor Gretchen Knapp said via email. “We're so pleased with how organizations across the county and multiple City departments worked together to make this a thrilling, smoothly executed event for residents and visitors.”

Mike McAfee, executive director of Visit Bloomington, said hotels and short-term rentals were “near capacity,” though he won’t have final data until later this month.

“It was an amazing event,” he said.

IU spokesman Mark Bode said the university hosted “tens of thousands of visitors and students across at least seven separate events,” including “nearly 10,000” at Memorial Stadium.

“Having paired the talents and expertise of IU students and faculty with the brilliance of top entertainers and trailblazers, then sharing with the rest of the world through 20+ media outlets, we can confidently call this weekend a success,” Bode said.

The airport saw significant traffic, welcoming about 100 planes, with most arriving between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Monday, Monroe County Airport Director Carlos Laverty said via email. He said he would not have final numbers on planes and passengers for another 24 hours.

"Everything went very smoothly; we all enjoyed a perfectly clear sky eclipse, and then, starting at 3:15, we departed virtually all of the transient aircraft by 6 PM," he said. "It was quite a feat for our air traffic controllers to work the planes into the overcrowded airspace."

"Despite the town being quiet, the airport was buzzing with activity," Laverty said, "... showcasing our collective efficiency and coordination."

Police cut short long shifts

At the Bloomington Police Department, officers of all ranks were scheduled to work 12-hour shifts. But they were cut to 10 hours as the day progressed, and the anticipated crowds failed to appear.

Seeing no influx of cars, BPD Deputy Chief Scott Oldham took a drive north of the city on Interstate 69 about 1 p.m. Monday to assess traffic conditions coming into Bloomington.

He was the lone northbound car as far as he could see, and he saw just a few cars headed south.

“I don’t know how the experts missed this so badly,” he said.

The police department and other agencies had gathered information and advice from cities and towns in the path of total darkness during the 2017 solar eclipse.

“Many of them said we were underestimating the number of people we would get,” he said. “We were relying on their experience.”

Oldham said the intricate plans developed by emergency officials weren’t in vain, though.

“I would say these experiences weren’t wasted, because these same plans remain in place for any public safety incident that might arise in the future,” he said.

Actual numbers far short of projections in many cities

Attendance numbers in nearby cities and towns, including Terre Haute, Columbus and Nashville, also fell far below projections.

While between 50,000 and 100,000 eclipse viewers were expected in Nashville and Brown County, an estimated 20,000 showed up.

“We were under the impression just by state messaging and how much they were preparing based off the 2017 eclipse that we might have up to 100,000 people,” Brown County Visitors Center director Cristina Villani said.

She was skeptical of the prediction. “We knew Brown County itself couldn’t sustain that many people, so we thought maybe 30,000 to 50,000, like a busy fall weekend,”

None of the IU Health hospitals in the south-central region saw a significant increase in patients.

“This was truly the best-case scenario for us, and we’re thankful for our team members and everyone outside of IU Health who helped ensure that our community would be taken care of even in a worse-case scenario,” said Jason King, chief operating officer and chief nursing officer at IU Health Morgan.

Before the eclipse, IU Health said as many as 130 doctors, nurses and other critical caregivers would sleep at the Bloomington hospital, some on cots in a dorm-like environment, for up to two nights, to prevent critical caregivers from getting stuck in traffic.

A wider path, good preparation, weather forecast

Community officials said they overprepared, which, they said, is better than the alternative, and some of them offered some rationale as to why the projected 300,000 visitors never came:

According to NASA, the path of totality for this year’s eclipse was between 108 and 122 miles wide, or about 72% wider, at the high end, than the eclipse in 2017. This year, about 31.6 million people lived in the path of totality, compared to 12 million in 2017.

“During the 2017 total solar eclipse, the moon was a little bit farther away from Earth than ... during the (2024) eclipse, causing the path of that eclipse to be a little skinnier,” the agency said.

The eclipse this year also passed over “more cities and densely populated areas” than in 2017, NASA said.

That meant people had more options as to where to travel, reducing the likelihood of congestion for any particular area.

Also, communities prepared for many months, with local government agencies, employers and schools shutting down for the day, which significantly reduced normal traffic.

“Given the unprecedented nature of this event, and what we've seen other communities have experienced in the past, all of the committee partners planned for large crowds,” Knapp said.

Weather likely also played a role, with forecasts calling for at least some chance of cloud cover for the Bloomington area, though nary a cloud appeared in the sky during the event. And, at least anecdotally, some local residents warned potential visitors to stay away from the area because of the dire predictions of being stuck in traffic for hours.

Jiffy Treet: At the center of it all

The lack of huge crowds didn't do much, though, to dampen the spirits of people who experienced the eclipse in Monroe County.

Jiffy Treet in Ellettsville, the epicenter of the total solar eclipse in Indiana, had a big day. More than 50 people watched the eclipse from a grassy field adjacent to the Ind. 46 ice cream shop.

Co-owner Danelle Clark said they served ice cream and lemonade treats to more than 700 customers Monday, scooping up 474 dips of ice cream, about 27 gallons.

The No. 1 seller was the shadow-and-light sundae, which featured a warm homemade fudge brownie. When it looked as if they might run out of brownies, six more batches arrived from another local business, Bake Me a Cake, to stem a possible shortage.

Clark acknowledged the crowds weren’t as big as expected, adding the weather was glorious.

“I couldn’t have asked for a better day,” she said. “I think the most traffic I saw were cars pulling in and out of Jiffy Treet.”

Boris Ladwig can be reached at bladwig@heraldt.com. Laura Lane can be reached at llane@heraldt.com.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Fewer tourists in Indiana on eclipse day than projected here's why