If you’re planning to jump on a plane to visit friends or family this Holiday season, prepare to pay more for your ticket. According to Expedia.com, Thanksgiving flights are up 17 percent from last year and Christmas flights have gone up 2 percent. Travel expert Dale Irvin says if you want to travel by air cheap you should book a flight with an “uber-discount airline”…:

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Discount airlines Frontier, Jet Blue and Spirit fly out of New Orleans and there’s one called Allegiant Airlines in Shreveport.

A recent survey by the National Retail Federation shows more than two-thirds of Americans will buy Halloween costumes this year. NRF Senior Director of Media Relations, Kathy Grannis, says people are spending money on more than just costumes and candy…

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She says Americans will spend a total of $7.4 billion this Halloween.

It’s been several days since many parts of the state have seen rain. State Climatologist Barry Keim says, on average, Louisiana gets a rainfall event every four days. He says even though it is unusual to go this long without seeing rain, we do have some significant dry days in history…

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Keim says it will likely remain dry in Louisiana at least until November.

Louisiana will get to view a partial solar eclipse today as the new moon will obscure part of the sun. Louisiana Tech Astronomer Lee Sawyer says this is happening a few weeks after the total eclipse of the moon. He says the very best way to view today’s partial eclipse is at an observing party or at a science museum but you should NOT look at the sun directly…

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Sawyer says we should be able to see the maximum point of eclipse before the sun goes down today at around 6PM.