Updated at 1:29 p.m.
As visitors continued to depart Vermont a day after the total solar eclipse drew crowds of thousands, public safety officials from around the state said they were still tallying estimates of how many cars and people had shown up.
But two things seemed clear on Tuesday morning, they said: A whole lot of people came to Vermont. And although outbound traffic was significant in the hours after the main event Monday afternoon, extending southbound drive times by hours in some cases, no major crises had befallen the state.
In fact, some authorities said, many motorists among the masses were downright pleasant.
“People were very patient, respectful, rolling down their windows to say thank you to us,” said Newport Police Chief Travis Bingham, who described the crowds as the largest he’s seen in his 20 years of working for the Northeast Kingdom city.
St. Johnsbury Town Manager Chad Whitehead shared a similar report, saying of traffic-jammed motorists: “They understood.”
And Lt. Tom Howard, acting commander of the Vermont State Police barracks in Berlin, was “thankful” about how the day turned out, even amid massive traffic.
“Everyone that I got to see seemed to be in a pretty good mood,” he said.
The day was not without incident. Mark Bosma, a spokesperson for Vermont Emergency Management, said at least 10 traffic accidents with injuries were reported on Monday, though he was not sure of the severity.
Howard said state police got a few calls from people who were stranded or stuck on back roads that their GPS told them to take, not realizing how tricky the roads would be.
Similarly, Vermont State Police Capt. Matt Daley said although there were no major crashes, he received word of a few “fender benders” and tow requests.
The biggest traffic choke points Daley observed were the intersection of interstates 89 and 91 in White River Junction, and farther south on I-91 where bridge construction forced motorists into a single lane in the Putney/Westminster area. Traffic was generally quite slow but not stopped, he said.
Overall, Bosma said, things went well from the emergency management team’s perspective. The “biggest issue was the need for water” at the southbound welcome centers in Sharon, Lyndonville and Williston, mostly due to “the wells needing a little time to refill themselves with all the extra flushes and hand washing,” he said in an email exchange. However, portable toilets at the sites ensured bathroom facilities were available.
In addition to other alerts, the state reported parking at capacity in St. Johnsbury and Newport in the hours before the eclipse, which took place shortly before 3:30 p.m.
The state had previously projected as many as 160,000 people — about a quarter of Vermont’s population — could come to the state for the big event, generally considered a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence that lasts for a few minutes or less. On Tuesday, Bosma said the state would “look at indicators over the next days and weeks to come up with an estimate” for how many people actually arrived.
But Bingham, the Newport chief, was already making a comparison to some of Vermont’s other biggest events, including a rock band’s infamous 2004 break-up concert that drew some 68,000 people to nearby Coventry.
“The only other thing was the Phish concert, but we didn’t get a lot of spillover from that,” Bingham said. He estimated there were at least 20,000 eclipse-watchers in Newport on Monday, a nearly fivefold increase of its normal population.
Howard, in the Berlin barracks, said that the area had slow-moving traffic until at least 9 p.m.
“I’m from out of state, so it looked like an evening commute in the state I’m from,” he said. “But certainly not something that I have seen in Vermont in my time working here.”
Maggie Cassidy contributed reporting.
