has declared a state of emergency as it prepares for an anticipated influx of up to a million visitors for the solar eclipse scheduled for early April. The on April 8 will mark the first to touch the province since 1979, and Niagara Falls was designated by National Geographic as one of the best places to view it. The city is in the path of totality, where the moon will entirely block the sun’s rays for a few minutes. Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati had said earlier in March that he expects the most visitors his city has ever seen in a single day. The regional municipality of Niagara is proactively invoking a state of emergency to prepare for the event. The declaration announced Thursday sets in motion some additional planning tools to prepare for the day, which could involve major traffic congestion, heavier demands on emergency services and cell phone network overloads. The eclipse will reach in the morning, cut diagonally across the United States from Texas to Maine, and exit in eastern Canada by late afternoon. Most of the rest of the continent will see a partial eclipse.