Log, Mar 6, 2009
14 people. We had a disagreement between various forecasting services we use to determine if FDO should be open. Usually the best service is Clear Sky Clock which tailors its forecasts to astronomy. It said that seeing would be great. Accuweather was predicting partially cloudy skies and the local TV stations seemed to think that the weekend weather would be fine on Saturday without really saying much beyond the temperature for Friday night. I guess that last night Accuweather was closet but they were all sort of wrong. WE had that weird kind of cloud coverage that forms in place rather than blows in from somewhere. It is sort of like mist on a frosty windshield that evaporates as the car warms. The upshot was we opened.A Cub Scout group from Westerly showed up and Mother Nature must like Cubs because while they were here, the air "evaporated" and we could see Venus (a very slim crescent), M42 and Saturn (with its rings turned on edge). What did we do for the rest of the night? Not a whole lot except that Francine and Les kept looking out at the clouds wondering if it would clear later. Finally, about 9:45 we gave up and shut down. It cleared as we left but before I got home, the clouds came back.-Les Coleman
