The skies have been so overcast these last few weeks, mostly a fairly undifferentiated mass of shades of grey. They have not been without interest however, even if I do get some funny looks when I take out my sunglasses to take a look through their polarised lenses.
I can confirm that some clouds do sometimes start to travel backwards, against the prevailing wind. They are always small, often looking like a piece which has just broken off from a larger cloud, or sometimes just a small one isolated in a temporary bowl of blue. They are always being pulled back towards a much larger, darker, angrier mass.
Another phenomenon I noticed for the first time is clouds converging from slightly different directions. I took me some time to make sure of this, sure that I was not just getting giddy & confused, what with having to keep turning my head & my relatively poor sense of spatial awareness.
The clouds have been coming mostly relentlessly from the west, but on days when they are moving quite fast, if I look to the south those clouds are travelling slightly towards the north east, while those on my northern side are travelling slightly towards the south east. Turns out they are converging on the nearest sizeable cross-Pennine valley, roughly a mile from where I stand, to give them an easier quicker crossing & avoid the pile up on the top of the hills.
