In the early morning hours, my brother tried to call me to tell me that the sky was red. I was in bed, for once, and I missed it. He said it was red, and it was even redder at 4 o’clock A.M. If it helps any, I live in southern-central Illinois. Thanks for the help.
Well, which direction was it red? North, east, south, west?
The aurora borealis?
That would, indeed, be the aurora: There was supposed to be a display this weekend, but I wouldn’t know… It was too cloudy here.
Hey, I’ve got an idea! Next time this happens, since you’re sleeping anyway, why don’t you take our clouds? 
Thats the first time I’ve gone to bed at 12 in a long time. The first time I do it…I miss an aurora. Oh well, maybe next time. Is there any more scheduled soon?
Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning.
Red sky at night, sailors’ delight.
Red sky at 1 o’clock, sailors don’t give a shit.
Yes, it appears there was a local substorm or something visible in Illinois and Indiana last night.
http://angwin.csl.uiuc.edu/~haunma/aurora/
They’re only predictable a day or three in advance. There’s several websites (such as the one linked by rowrrbazzle) which will tell you when a CME is headed our way, which is the early warning.
On June 29, 1908 the skies of Europe were incredibly bright with what was called “noctilucent clouds”. These were, it later turned out, due to the injection of a lot of high-level dust into the atmosphere associated with the Pons-Winnecke comet and the fall of the Tunguska meteorite (and the fall of two other meteorites on the same day, an event that is usually not noticed). Norwegian astronomer Torvald Kul correctly surmise that the dust was due to a large meteorite at the time (it was reflecting sunlight down to the normally dark parts of the Earth). You can read accounts of this if you look through back issues of European newspapers, or read books on the Tungiska meteorite. It was light at 1 AM that people could read newspapers by the sky light alone.
I’m not saying this is what you saw, but I just wanted to point out that this could be an explanation. Nowadays, too, there’s so much streetlighting that large amounts of low level dust or clouds can reflect that local light back to the ground.
indeed, it happens often during the Summer in Phoenix. My father goes to work at 4 AM, and when I get up with him, the sky often has a reddish hue.
I’d venture it’s the pollution, but I am hardly an expert.
I know what you are talking about. I live in a place where agriculture is big, and this is havest time, so, we have our fair share of dust and stuff. Although I don’t think that’s what it was.
I got to talk to my brother in person today. His girlfriend said that there where two separate parts and stuff. This is really vauge to me. This is probably something that I would have to observe to give you guys a logical explaination on what it looked like.
My brother made a comment, which makes sense, that there was nothing in the local news, newspapers, or nothing. We found that kind of strange.