I wake up to all over gray skies without any break. Soft, light gray, right down to the horizon — which means I’m seeing at least 40 miles of unbroken cloud, twenty miles each way, and that means plenty more; it’s not like the horizon is an edge!
With a touch of excitement! When I step outside and look straight up, little low patches of darker gray racing across the sky from the south. They must be everywhere, but I only see them overhead. Not enough contrast to show up at the greateer distances of other parts if the sky, I suppose. I don’t know why they are there or why they are from the south, but I can make a guess, and we’ll learn more over the year to see how likely my answer may be.
In South Dakota. pretty much all our moisture comes out of the south. California gets moisture from the ocean, and New England gets it from the other ocean, but we generally get it from the Gulf of Mexico. It comes flying north and then, somewhere, it meets cold air and condenses into rain. These may be the markers of that northerly journey. You can’t see any wind in the rest of the rain sheet (nimbo-stratus in English); it’s so evenly colored that no motion is visible, but motion must be there.
The dogs smell. Sign of low pressure is the release of smells. I need to make bread or pancakes!
Notice the Universe 