NavList:

Here is an easy question to start the week.

On Saturday my wife and I drove from the San Francisco Bay Area up to Washington.  Because of a terrible weather forecast we left very early to make sure we would get across the mountain passes before the blizzard set in.  This meant that during dawn twilight we were driving up the I-5 freeway at approximately 39N 122W.  The car was travelling approximately NNW and my wife was driving, so I sat in the passenger's seat looking towards the north east.  The northern sky was clouded by the gathering storm, but the eastern sky was 90% clear.

Because I grew up in the southern hemisphere and conducted all of my pre-GPS celestial navigation down there, I am less familiar with the northern hemisphere view of the sky and always take an interest in the navigation stars available to me at dusk and dawn.  There was one star in my field of view, not too high (below 45 degrees) and hanging in there until the emerging light caused it to fade away.

What was it?