A few posts ago, I mentioned that I was doing a spreadsheet showing the number of clear nights vs cloudy ones over a given period of time. Now August is over, and we are into September, I can look at the first full month and see that, actually it was not bad at all. I only recorded eight nights in July, and of these three were clear – out of eight nights three clear ones in what had been an exceptionally wet and wild month were actually quite good. August, the first full month of this had sixteen – yes sixteen! – clear nights, or partially clear nights, that were observationally usable (partially clear nights are only on the spreadsheet if it was clear for an hour or more with 70% or more of the sky cloud free, that allows you to do at least some observing). That’s over half the month, and for a change these clear nights were NOT around the Full Moon! Of course, due to work, etc, it’s not possible to make use of all clear nights but it’s nice to see we’ve done well so far.
Here’s hoping this pattern carries on into September and beyond…