Are the crowds in Texas going to be even worse in 2024 because that's the only likely place to have clear skies?
The crowds will be worse because there will be 20x as many people who have seen one exhorting their friends and family to go.
The population that lives within the 2024 path is far larger, with major cities San Antonio (divided by southern limit), Austin, Dallas, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Buffalo, Montreal (divided by northern limit).
Clear sky weather odds were not that great on the eastern half of the path this time. But the only places mostly clouded out were coastal South Carolina and a swath from eastern Nebraska through Missouri to part of southern Illinois.
There is a lot of inertia of people going to where they have planned and staying put. Carbondale, Illinois was the classic example. People paid to view from inside a football stadium and were lucky to get 12 seconds of totality through a hole in the clouds. Meanwhile veteran eclipse chaser Dan McGlaun was nearby, saw the clouds coming and made a mad dash in his car during the last half hour before totality to get out from under them.
A lot of the places in 2024 have mediocre weather odds, but we have decent short term forecasts and an excellent highway system. People need to take advantage of those. It's not ridiculous to stay in the Northeast if you prioritize mobility. If a big weather system is going to cloud out the whole region you are likely to know that a few days in advance.
We had divergent weather forecasts in Jackson up to 4AM on eclipse day. The majority of forecasts were favorable so 40 of us stayed put and went up the Jackson tram. The other 17 gave up their tram tickets and went for the more unanimous clear forecast in eastern Idaho. In our case we had been to 8-10 other eclipses and really wanted to see this one from 10,000 feet. The amazing view we got justified our taking that chance. Of course we had another event planned up there
, which could have been performed later if the weather was bad and everyone went to Idaho. We had some concern that people would follow us up the mountain for the wedding, so I sent an e-mail at 5:15AM disclosing that the 2 most veteran eclipse chasers in our group with 20+ viewed were decamping to Idaho and that each group with a car was free to make its own call.