A milky-gray dome stretched above central Missouri today, diffusing the sunlight and dulling whatever color is left in the mid December landscape. Sunrise and sunset were also devoid of color, merely announced by a gradual brightening and darkening of the frosted-glass dome.
With a cold front sagging to our south, a stationary front to our west and the nearest low on the Eastern Seaboard, there was no lift or surface wind to disturb the calm, winter air mass. While one might say it was a cloudy day, individual clouds could not be identified and no layering of the overcast was evident; neither pockets of blue nor bright horizons held promise of a coming change.
It was, indeed, a classic winter sky in the American Midwest, too cold for rain and too dry for snow. Beneath the opaque sky, our wild neighbors went about their business, oblivious of the filtered sunlight, and many humans, focused on their holiday shopping, were happy enough to have clear, dry roads. Some of us would prefer a good winter snowstorm to ring in the season while others despise the December gray, counting the days until the first crocuses poke above the cold, wet soil.
