A city 30 miles south of Dallas promises it'll have the best view of the big eclipse, coming up on April 8: Ennis, which already has a number of feathers in its cap including its reputation as the Official Bluebonnet City and Trail of Texas, is staking a claim that its view of the Great North American Eclipse will be the best in Texas.

This is the total solar eclipse crossing North America, first passing over Mexico, then taking a northeasterly diagonal path across the U.S. and Canada.

The sky will darken as the moon passes between the sun and the earth, completely blocking the face of the sun, while making the sun’s solar corona (outer atmosphere) visible to the naked eye.

As a release notes, it's an event that occurs somewhere on earth once every 18 months or so, but occurs at any given place only once every 375 years — making it a once-in-a-lifetime event.

The eclipse will cross over 13 U.S. states from the southwest to the northeast (Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Tennessee, Michigan), but there is a narrow path of totality, when things go truly dark — which you can experience only if you're directly in the center of the moon's shadow.

Texas is considered one of the best places to view the eclipse, because that's where the duration of totality will be the longest. As it moves northeast, the duration will decrease, with the shortest duration in Maine (less than 3 minutes).

Ennis will be directly in the center of the moon’s shadow, making it one of the points of greatest duration, boasting the longest viewing time of totality:

The skies in Ennis will go completely dark for four minutes and 23 seconds — one of the longest viewing times in the U.S.

Time for a bulleted list comparing Ennis' totality time to other cities in Texas:

• Ennis: 4 minutes 23 seconds
• Dallas: 3 minutes 49 seconds
• Fort Worth: 2 minutes 33 seconds
• San Antonio: 2 minutes 3 seconds
• Austin: 1 minute 44 seconds

Given this superior ranking, Ennis — where the population is 23,000 — is anticipating an influx of 200,000 visitors during the big event from across the globe.

The city will have multiple viewing locations for visitors that include historic Downtown Ennis, the Texas Motorplex, and Sugar Ridge Winery.

It even has a jazzy website, Eclipse Over Ennis. That is some creative civic marketing.

The total duration of the elipse in North America will last 2 hours, 39 minutes, 45 seconds.

Other salient Ennis eclipse stats include:

• Partial eclipse begins in Ennis at 12:22:43 pm
• Full eclipse begins in Ennis at 1:40:02 pm
• Maximum at 1:42:14 pm
• Full eclipse ends at 1:44:25 pm
• Partial eclipse ends at 3:02:28 pm

For more information about the Eclipse Over Ennis, contact the Ennis Welcome Center at 972-878-4748.