Why are solar eclipses rare in the contiguous United States?
First, the US has had a long eclipse drought, with no total solar eclipses in the 48 states between 1979 and 2017; but that’s just a short-term blip in the long-term statistics. Second, most of the answers here are good, but they are wrong when they say that all places on earth see total eclipses with about the same frequency. Here are some statistics about total solar eclipses: 1) At a given location on earth, the average interval between total solar eclipses is 375 years. (The actual interval, however, can be much shorter or longer.) If a typical life span around the world is 70 years, that means that about 19% of people will be able to see a total eclipse sometime from their home. The other 81% will never see one unless they travel. 2) A little-known fact is that total solar eclipses are more common in the northern hemisphere than the southern hemisphere. (That’s a little sloppy, and it’s better to put it this way: The average interval between total solar eclipses from a random loca
