• A total solar eclipse will cross the United States from coast to coast on Monday, starting just after 10 a.m. local time in Oregon and ending just before 3 p.m. in South Carolina.

• The last time an eclipse traveled across the entire country was in 1918.

• Veteran eclipse chasers say you should prepare to feel changed forever if this is your first total eclipse. We made a guide on how to watch the eclipse safely, and another if you're stuck indoors. We're collecting and sharing your photos from the eclipse here.

• Weather forecasts suggested that Oregon and Tennessee would have favorable skies, and that Missouri, Nebraska and South Carolina faced the prospect of clouds and storms. Heavy traffic was anticipated in many states, but had not materialized in some by Sunday night.

• Scientists are hoping their studies of this eclipse will lead to important discoveries about the sun's mysterious corona, which burns more than a million degrees hotter than the sun's surface.

Here's where the eclipse will go, and when.

The moon will begin to get in the sun's way over the Pacific Ocean on Monday morning. This will create a zone that scientists call totality — the line where the moon completely blocks the sun, plunging the sea and then a strip of land across the continental United States into a darkness that people and other living things can mistake for premature evening.

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Because of planetary geometry, the total eclipse can last less than one minute in some places, and as long as two minutes and 41 seconds in others. The eclipse's longest point of duration is near a small town called Makanda, Ill., population 600.

Photo

An aerial photo of the crowd at the Big Summit Eclipse 2017 festival near Prineville, Ore., on Saturday. CreditOregon State Police

Around 1:15 p.m. Eastern time, the total solar eclipse will first reach Oregon's coast. Then it will race for the next 90 or so minutes over 13 more states: Idaho, Montana (barely), Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa (hardly), Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina and finally South Carolina.

At about 2:49 p.m. Eastern time in South Carolina, some lucky souls in the Palmetto State's marshes could be the last on American soil to experience the total eclipse. Just after 4 p.m. Eastern, the partial eclipse will end and all of America will again be under the full August sun.