Internet Traffic Drops as Total Solar Eclipse Sweeps Europe, Cloudflare Radar Shows 15–30% Decline

On August 12, 2026, a total solar eclipse crossed the North Atlantic and moved over Iceland, northern Spain and Portugal, with a deep partial eclipse across the rest of Western Europe. Cloudflare’s Radar data, which tracks HTTP request volume in five‑minute intervals, shows a clear dip in online activity that aligns precisely with the eclipse’s peak obscuration. Regions within the path of totality—particularly Iceland, Spain and Portugal—experienced the largest decreases, with traffic falling between 15 % and 30 % during the 15‑minute window around maximum eclipse. Areas that saw only a shallow partial eclipse saw smaller or negligible drops, while some northern countries such as Norway and Sweden even recorded slight increases. The timing and magnitude of the traffic troughs match the calculated percentage of the sun’s disk covered by the moon, indicating that the eclipse itself, not network issues, caused the slowdown. The data illustrate how a shared physical event can temporarily reshape digital behavior across an entire continent, offering a snapshot of human attention in real time.