I live north of Austin and the hour before totality we had a fair amount of clouds with the sun just peaking through, then just minutes before we reached 100% the low clouds just seemingly evaporated, temperatures dropped sharply, and every bird and frog around started singing. All the automatic lights had turned on by that time. Then totality hit and seeing the 'black hole sun' with a white ring around it was just awe inspiring. You don't know exactly how to interpret the sky, because it's kind of like pre-dawn in every direction. Sky glow is coming from every direction, and yet it's dark where you are. Finally when the sun comes back it rapidly brightens. Looking off to the north east I could see the darkness of the shadow that had been over us.

> I used to say this about seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time after seen pictures/video of it, but the eclipse was at least 10x that experience.

I said the same thing about seeing Tunnel View in Yosemite for the first time. It's the closest thing that I can say that describes the experience and the eclipse eclipses (heh) that.