At 3:06 p.m. on April 8, the city of Indianapolis will experience its first total solar eclipse in 819 years. The so-called “path of totality” will cut a huge swath from the southwestern tip of Indiana to the state’s east-central border region, with Vincennes, Bloomington, Franklin and New Castle each experiencing just over four minutes of totality. Our capital city will itself have three minutes and 49 seconds when the moon blocks the sun’s face as it passes between the sun and the Earth. During totality, if skies are clear, the sky will darken as if it were dawn or dusk and the sun’s bright atmosphere (the “corona”) will be visible around the dark moon.

As an attorney who advises employers, the impact of this rare celestial event on Indiana’s employers has been on my mind. You may be wondering why, since the event will last just a few minutes. There are several reasons that the 2024 eclipse could affect employers with operations that lie in the path of totality. The first is that the total solar eclipse is likely to draw thousands of visitors who want to experience totality. Indeed, the 2024 eclipse may be an even bigger draw than the total solar eclipse in 2017 (when the path of totality fell across the country’s western states) because the sun’s activity level will be at its peak in April. This means that “the corona will appear larger and have more outflows and spikelike structures than in an eclipse during quieter solar conditions,” according to “Scientific American.”

Click here to read the full article written by Germaine Willett and first published in The Indiana Lawyer. Login may be required.