At my house it was mostly cloudy, with new clouds forming over the hill the Moon had risen behind, and I only got one brief view as totality began.  Decided to drive around to try elsewhere, and sure enough as soon as I got away from the hills, the sky opened up and stayed clear the whole time.  It's amazing how much terrain influences clouds.

Tried a few HDR composites:

Stellarator, JackDole, Gnargenox is referring to a small asteroid hitting the Moon during the eclipse.  Impacts big enough for the flash to be observed from Earth actually happen fairly often.



I checked if any of my photos might have captured it, but alas no.  The impact happened just after the eclipse became total, but I wasn't in position to view it until closer to the midpoint of totality.

A-L-E-X wrote:

Source of the post The moon was unusually bright even during totality, was that because it passed through the top part of the earth's umbra? 

The brightness and color of the umbra varies with distance from the center, and also depends on the amount of cloudiness and volcanic aerosols in Earth's atmosphere.  But my impression was that this eclipse was actually somewhat darker (for where it was in the shadow) than most that I've seen.  I'd estimate it as maybe an L2.

Graphic representation of the Danjon Scale (take with a grain of salt because this is quite subjective).  All of these images portray the Moon in the same position in the umbra, offset from the center and with the center at upper right.



My photograph which I think most closely resembles what it looked like to me at mid-eclipse:


I have definitely seen brighter, more orange-yellow lunar eclipses.

A-L-E-X wrote:

Source of the post Also why was the moon so high up in the sky near the zenith?  Was that because in the winter the moon gets higher up than it does in the summer?

Yes, because the full moon is opposite the Sun.  During winter days the Sun is lower above the horizon (for those in the northern hemisphere), and lower below the horizon at night, and so the full moon being opposite that must be higher in the sky during winter nights.

Above the Arctic Circle, just as how the Sun never rises in winter, the full moon never rises in summer, and never sets in winter (with some additional variation due to the moon's inclination relative to the ecliptic -- the moon sometimes doesn't rise even if you are slightly below the circle.)