I use forever to launch my nodeJs server and I choose the log file :
forever -l /home/api/log/api_output.log start server.js
I use logrotate to move logfile ever
i think it's because of living stream between forever and the log file.
forever use file stream to log file. and you renamed this file by logrotate. but stream don't change. so log messages were written in api_output.log-20140418.
if you want to change stream, you should rotate by node.js code, or use pipeline.