Just got my ass out of bed at 3am to go out of my apartment building to see it. I remember seeing a partial as a kid, but holy frabjous day is there a world of difference.
The moon was an incredibly dark red (from what I saw before). It's literally a blood red moon, like more red than I remember observing Mars as.
I was hoping to see it off my balcony (should be able to catch one of the 2014 lunar eclipses that way) but it's still incredibly high in the sky. However for setting an alarm and putting a winter coat on, it was totally worth it.
Quite simply, it's by far the coolest thing I've seen this year and I spent diddley squat on it.
Fortunately, lunar eclipses happen with some regularity: http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/ has a schedule up IIRC, but you may have to wait until tomorrow to get it, it seems a bit hammered for some reason (ahem). This would be barely newsworthy if it didn't coincide with the solstice, an event only remarkable to us humans.
The solar eclipses are a bit more rare. Again, IIRC, the next one that I have a chance to see, assuming I am in the same place by then, was 2024. That'll be a pretty good one for the US, with the center going through northern California and passing through Texas.
The solstice is unremarkable, or the coincidence is? I would think the shortest day of the year is relatively noteworthy to other species, even if they can't detect the specific date; certainly more interesting than a lunar eclipse (I'd assume most animals are either asleep or can function just fine without a visible moon).
I agree the coincidence is pretty meaningless, especially since it's about 15 hours off from the exact moment of the solstice.
I feel your pain. Syracuse, NY here... Thanks to Lake Ontario, we're under almost perpetual cloud cover during the winter (with snow falling out of those clouds most of the time).
