Eclipse watchers stuck in heavy traffic driving home: "Worst traffic I've ever seen"

Drivers returning home Monday from watching the solar eclipse in cities and towns in the path of totality described traffic jams that were among the worse they'd ever experienced, keeping them on roads all night and into Tuesday morning. 

Indeed, cities and towns in the eclipse's path experienced some of their largest influxes of tourists in their histories, providing an economic boom to states from Texas to Vermont. While eclipse tourists tended to stagger their arrivals during the weekend leading up to the event, many departed roughly at the same time after the eclipse ended on Monday afternoon, clogging highways and local roads.

Traffic on I-89 in Vermont, which links Burlington, a city in the path of the totality, with Boston, and on the state's I-91 was heavy on Monday afternoon, according to the Vermont Agency of Transportation. "Worst traffic I've ever seen," wrote Richard Chen of the venture fund 1confirmation on X, formerly known as Twitter, after visiting northern Vermont to view the eclipse. But, he added, "[I]t was totally worth it."