Eclipse Searches
Eclipse Searches
[Cueball walks up to Megan while holding his smartphone up in his hand. Megan sits in an office chair in front of her desk with an open laptop on it. She turns her head towards him. A footnote to Cueball's speech is at the bottom right of the panel.] Cueball: Have you seen this cool map* showing how Google searches for "eclipse" trace the eclipse's path? Megan: Yeah! Megan: But you know what else I noticed? Cueball: What? Footnote: *wapo.st/2vkgIBv
[Two panels are on top of each other. In the smaller top panel a colored graph is shown with a blue growing graph and a steeper growing red graph above it. Both are labeled. The x-axis (a black line) has labels and arrows below it in red and blue to indicate time periods. Text above the graph:] Searches for "eclipse" in the weeks before the eclipse are outpacing searches for "election" in the weeks before the 2016 election. Red line: Eclipse Blue line: Election Red x-axis labels: 2017 →|← July →|← August → Blue x-axis labels: 2016 - September →|← October →|←
[Behind the top panel is a second larger panel slightly lower end more to the right. The visible part at the bottom of this panel is showing the same line graphs with the one from the election going past the election day. The x-axis labels ranges over a later time. The blue graph has a huge peak at the election day, visible in the part of the panel to the right of the top panel) and this date is written in a blue dot on the label. Similar the date of the Eclipse is written in a red dot. The red graph above the blue still ends in dots before the expected peak, as it is in the future.] Red line: Eclipse Blue line: Election Red x-axis labels: 2017 - July →|← August 21 → Blue x-axis labels: 2016 - October →|← November 8 →
[Megan with her hands on the laptop and Cueball are both looking at the laptop. Beat panel.]
[Cueball stands again and Megan has taken her hands down from the laptop.] Cueball: This is gonna be bad, isn't it? Megan: If you're planning to be on the road next Monday, bring water.

This comic is the first of five consecutive comics published in the week before and during the solar eclipse occurring on Monday, August 21, 2017 which was visible as a total solar eclipse within a band across the contiguous United States from west to east and visible as a partial eclipse across the entire contiguous United States and beyond. The other comics are 1877: Eclipse Science , 1878: Earth Orbital Diagram , 1879: Eclipse Birds , and 1880: Eclipse Review .
Cueball comes to tell Megan about a cool map showing that searches on Google on the word Eclipse trace the same path across the USA as the totality band does, implying that those living in the zone are more interested than the rest of the US population.
The " cool map " is hosted by The Washington Post and sourced from Google Trends data. The link shown in the comic is here: wapo.st/2vkgIBv (subscription required);  an archived version is available here at archive.org
Since the eclipse searches are outpacing the 2016 election searches now, this is saying the eclipse popularity is going to rocket upwards just before the eclipse. Cueball is thus warned by Megan that the extreme amount of social media interest in the eclipse may lead to massive traffic jams, as last days frenzy regarding the eclipse will cause an enormous amount of people to decide to go to the eclipse in the last moment, causing huge traffic jams. (These traffic jams may be analogous to long lines at the polls or traffic jams caused by people trying to get to the polls.) Also as soon as people driving on the freeway enters the totality zone it has been seen happening that people just stop their cars and get out blocking the roads.  This time also the eclipse-viewers will wish to post their content on the social media which might also cause a cyber traffic jam, in which users may find that they experience delays in sending or receiving data due to a high demand on telecommunications infrastructure. Megan tells Cueball to bring water if he is on the road during the totality, the implication being that people who are on the road may be stuck in their vehicles for long periods of time, and thus need refreshments.
In the graph charting interest in the 2016 US presidential election , November 8 is an important date as it was the day the election was held. August 21, 2017 refers to the date of the then upcoming solar eclipse.
The title text refers to the total eclipses from 1970 and 1979 which were also visible in the US, but both only for a few states. The traffic jams will be worse than those caused by previous eclipses, as we did not have viral social media in the 1970s, and also much less traffic on the roads.
[Cueball walks up to Megan while holding his smartphone up in his hand. Megan sits in an office chair in front of her desk with an open laptop on it. She turns her head towards him. A footnote to Cueball's speech is at the bottom right of the panel.] Cueball: Have you seen this cool map* showing how Google searches for "eclipse" trace the eclipse's path? Megan: Yeah! Megan: But you know what else I noticed? Cueball: What? Footnote: *wapo.st/2vkgIBv
[Two panels are on top of each other. In the smaller top panel a colored graph is shown with a blue growing graph and a steeper growing red graph above it. Both are labeled. The x-axis (a black line) has labels and arrows below it in red and blue to indicate time periods. Text above the graph:] Searches for "eclipse" in the weeks before the eclipse are outpacing searches for "election" in the weeks before the 2016 election. Red line: Eclipse Blue line: Election Red x-axis labels: 2017 →|← July →|← August → Blue x-axis labels: 2016 - September →|← October →|←
[Behind the top panel is a second larger panel slightly lower end more to the right. The visible part at the bottom of this panel is showing the same line graphs with the one from the election going past the election day. The x-axis labels ranges over a later time. The blue graph has a huge peak at the election day, visible in the part of the panel to the right of the top panel) and this date is written in a blue dot on the label. Similar the date of the Eclipse is written in a red dot. The red graph above the blue still ends in dots before the expected peak, as it is in the future.] Red line: Eclipse Blue line: Election Red x-axis labels: 2017 - July →|← August 21 → Blue x-axis labels: 2016 - October →|← November 8 →
[Megan with her hands on the laptop and Cueball are both looking at the laptop. Beat panel.]
[Cueball stands again and Megan has taken her hands down from the laptop.] Cueball: This is gonna be bad, isn't it? Megan: If you're planning to be on the road next Monday, bring water.
