All was quiet.
When emergency managers across the state met on a conference call Saturday morning, quiet was the theme, said Chris Havel, a spokesman with the Oregon Eclipse Joint Operations Center in Salem.
"Everyone is being really cautious about assuming what that means yet," Havel said.
People responding to doomsday traffic warnings by staying home?
People planning to travel late Sunday, or worse, early Monday because they couldn't find - or afford - overnight accommodations?
People just less interested than boosters and emergency planners thought?
The calm before the storm?
It's anybody's guess.
Emergency planners had expected as many as 1 million visitors to the state for Monday's eclipse.
Not everyone was delighted by the sparser-than-expected crowds.
Several vendors at the Salem Saturday Market said crowds were smaller than a typical Saturday, despite clear skies and modest temperatures.
Ashlyn Etter, a solar eclipse merchandise vendor in Madras, felt letdown by the eclipse hype. "I'm wondering where all the traffic is," Etter said. She worries she'll have to drop prices.
Joe Davis, owner of the Black Bear Diner, said one of his hosts spent his shift writing down countries from which people are visiting. At the end of six hours, he had 42 countries on the list.
Mid-day Saturday, at least a hundred people turned out for acro-yoga. They split into pairs, with one person suspended in the air on the other's feet. Afterward came backrubs, a group hug and cheers.
The scene in Madras held a more somber note. A small plane crashed while approaching the airport just before 2 p.m. The two people aboard the plane were killed, officials said, and a brush fire erupted.
In Sisters, about 600 homes remained evacuated due to a threat from the Milli Fire.
Patches of central and southern Oregon were dealing with smoke at levels that were unhealthy for children, the elderly and people with lung and heart problems.
Emergency managers said they've been getting a lot of calls from people still trying to find eclipse glasses, but several stores still appear to be in stock, including the south Salem Fred Meyer, where they were selling for $1.99, with a limit of 20 pairs per customer.
Despite the lull, emergency managers aren't sitting back in their seats. The threat from wildfires, for example, must be monitored closely.
"Nobody knows what to expect from this kind of thing because we've never been through it," Havel said. "We're in that period now where things can change quickly."
-- Oregonian reporters Lizzy Acker, Grant Butler, Eder Campuzano, Jamie Hale, Kale Williams and Fedor Zarkhin contributed to this report.
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©2017 The Oregonian (Portland, Ore.)
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