Jessica Neiles, a lead meteorologist at the National Weather Service center in Burlington, Vermont said on April 1 that they have just entered the window where they can start predicting the weather with accuracy.

As of Thursday, April 4, the NWS forecast for Lake Placid called for mostly sunny skies, a high near 51 and northwest winds from 5 to 7 mph.

Get the latest NWS forecast at www.weather.gov.

Neiles said meteorologists will be “fine tuning” the cloud forecast over the course of the week.

While the eclipse is a sure thing — working like clockwork and predictable thousands of years out with mathematics — the weather is not. It is fickle and prone to change.

Clear skies provide for optimal viewing, with a rare chance to see the sun’s corona — the light casting off the edges of the sun, which wraps around the moon during a total solar eclipse.

But Adirondack Sky Center and Observatory President Seth McGowan said it’s not all or nothing. Even if it is a cloudy day, a total eclipse is not something to miss.

In rain or snow, an eclipse is still a “spectacular” event, he said. The portion of the world in the path of totality goes completely dark. McGowan said because of the extreme strange changes to the atmosphere a total eclipse brings, it can can cause hail, thunder or lightning.

“It’s still very dramatic to experience a complete solar eclipse during overcast skies,” McGowan said. “The eclipse alone, even with overcast skies, would be a mind-blowing event.”

Tupper Lake amateur astronomer and ASCO Trustee Marc Staves has been looking at a numerical weather model on tropicaltidbits.com, which shows no precipitation anticipated on April 8 at the time of the eclipse.

There is some cloud coverage predicted hanging out to the west and north of the Adirondacks, in Canada and over Lake Ontario, correlating with a low pressure system. But that is not predicted to move clouds into the Adirondacks until early on April 9.

“We don’t want to jinx anything, so we’re not talking too much about the weather,” McGowan said. “Just to keep the gods on our side. We don’t want to give anybody any idea.”

The ASCO is also not leaving things up to chance. As the only astronomy organization based in the Adirondacks, he said they felt a responsibility to create an event promoting the science and experience of a total solar eclipse in Tupper Lake that is not weather dependent.

The Totality in Tupper event is five years in the making, McGowan said, and is predicted to make Tupper Lake a hub of scientists, scientific fascination and events for people of every age and every level of interest — from kids to avid astronomers.