The heat of the eclipse

The eclipse reaches Saudi Arabia in the early afternoon, in midsummer. Totality falls between 13:21 and 13:44, Saudi Arabia time (UTC+3), with the Sun 67° to 77° above the horizon.

From first to last contact you will spend 2 h 43 min in the sun in Jeddah. Bring water and shade for all of it, not just for the minutes of totality.

As for the sky, Eclipsophile finds the coastal plain sunny but dusty, with cloud building over the mountains. Check the forecast for dust and cloud the day before.

August in western Saudi Arabia

City	Average high	Average low	Humidity
Jeddah	38.7 °C	28.6 °C	59%
Ta'if	36.0 °C	23.8 °C	31%
Abha	30.7 °C	17.2 °C	53%
Jizan	38.0 °C	29.8 °C	64%
Najran	39.6 °C	24.8 °C	18%

1991–2020 normals from NOAA (Jeddah, Najran), NCEI (Abha) and the WMO (Taif, Jizan), as given by each city’s English Wikipedia article.

How to prepare

Plenty of water for the whole group, including the wait.
Shade nearby and a hat: around midday there is almost no shadow.
With the Sun so high, looking up tires the neck. A deck chair or a mat helps.
Eclipse glasses meeting ISO 12312-2 for all the partial phases. Take them off only during totality.
Phones and cameras overheat in the sun: keep them in the shade until the moment.

Places: the provinces from the UN administrative boundaries (OCHA COD-AB for Saudi Arabia, from GADM, CC BY-IGO), towns and villages from GeoNames (geonames.org, CC BY 4.0) and names from Wikidata (CC0) and Wikipedia. Times and durations: our own calculation with JPL’s DE440s ephemeris, in Saudi Arabia time (UTC+3, all year round, with no daylight saving time).