The Skies

Sun and Moon Data

To find sun and moon rising and setting times for your park or office, go to the U.S. Naval Observatory’s Complete Sun and Moon Data for One Day webpage.

Night Skies

An update on the moon, planets and night skies for January.

Visible planets during the period:

• Mars is low in the southwest after sunset all month.
• Jupiter is high in the east after sunset and is visible in the night sky until the early hours.
• Venus rises shortly after twilight in early January but becomes progressively harder to see as the month goes on.
• Saturn rises shortly before 3 a.m. local time on January 1st and then about 30 minutes earlier with each successive week.  

Calendar of upcoming celestial events:

• Thursday, 1/3 – Peak of Quadrantid meteor shower. Under a dark sky in a typical year, it produces from 60 to 200 meteors per hour, with an average of about 120.
• Sunday, 1/6 – The moon passes a few degrees south of Saturn.
• Thursday, 1/10 – The moon passes three degrees north of Venus.
• Friday, 1/11 – New moon (dark).
• Sunday, 1/13 – The moon passes six degrees north of Mars.
• Monday, 1/21 – The waxing moon passes a half degree south of Jupiter.
• Saturday, 1/26 – Full moon.

For more information on stars, planets and other night sky phenomena, go to “The Sky This Week” page at the U.S. Naval Observatory page at http://www.usno.navy.mil/USNO/tours-events/sky-this-week

The Weather

Watches and Warnings

The principal watches and warnings posted as of early this morning were as follows. Note that these change over the course of a day and represent only initial daily forecasts. Click on this link for a full-sized map showing these hazards:

• Winter storm watches, warnings and advisories – Western North Carolina, west Texas, and northeast Wyoming.
• High wind watches, warnings and advisories – Western South Dakota, southern California.
• Flood watches, warnings and advisories – Counties in Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana.

For additional information on severe weather, go to the NOAA Storm Prediction Center at http://www.spc.noaa.gov/ .

In Memoriam

There were no NPS line of duty deaths on this date. Click here for a full list of on-duty deaths.

From The Morning Report Archives

Today’s incident from the Morning Report archives:

Grand Canyon NP – Rangers received a report of a hypothermic hiker on the Bright Angel Trail about a mile-and-a-half below the rim at 2 a.m. on February 1, 1989. Responding rangers found a 33-year-old man lying face down in the snow and barely able to respond to questions. He’d been attempting an 18-mile, round-trip day hike to the Colorado River and had collapsed on the way back up. Park medics with advance life support training employed passive techniques to warm Green, whose core temperature was initially below 90 degrees, then evacuated him by wheeled litter and helicopter at daybreak. He survived his ordeal only because of the rangers’ intercession.

Contact Information
Name: Bill Halainen, Editor