Friday, January 2, 2015 - Still Hoping to see the Quadrantid Meteor Shower

  Cloudy conditions persisted during the predawn hours of Friday January 2nd. By 4:00 AM the sheets of high clouds that I'd seen on Thursday evening through midnight had given way to big clumps of altocumulus drifting slowly by. Some breaks in those clouds let me see Arcturus and some of the brighter stars in Bootes and Ursa Major, but way too much of the sky was covered to do a decent meteor observing session. We were about 41 hours away from the predicted peak of the Quadrantids. Had it been clearer, some decent visual data might have been obtained! By 4:00 AM the temperature had fallen to 25°F and though winds from the southwest were lighter than they'd been earlier in the night, the wind chill was still 16°F. This turned out to be the low temperature for the night.

  Temperatures started to climb again even before sunrise (at 8:06 AM). By mid-morning we were above the freezing point, and we topped out at 39°F for an afternoon high. Winds were light for most of the day, but picked up a little after dark. It was a dry day, but a bright overcast stayed in place that occasionally let filtered sunlight through. Sunset happened at 5:31 PM. Temperatures stayed above the freezing point after dark, but a thick overcast had settled in. By midnight there was light fog in the air and we were still at 34°F.

  That big low-pressure system I wrote about yesterday was still moving our way from the southwest on Friday, and radar images showed rain bands drifting toward us from Arkansas, Missouri, and southern Illinois all day long, but falling apart in the drier air still over Indiana. The first showers were supposed to reach us before dawn on Saturday, and forecasts still called for some of that precipitation to fall as freezing rain until turning to all rain after sunrise. Indiana counties just north of Marion County all the way to the Michigan border were under a Winter Weather Advisory from 3:00 AM - 9:00 AM on Saturday morning, with more of an icing threat from this same system.