January 2026

Digital painting of a night sky, a full moon glowing behind a group of clouds. Around the moon is an iridescent glow, more diffuse than a halo. Behind the backlit clouds, the sky is pitch black.

January 2nd

We report: there is a lunar corona tonight, and this is the first time we are able to observe one so closely. When it is a solar corona, even the darkest of sunglasses cannot help us see it. We feel just fine watching the moon; we only have to accept that it is looking back.

Digital painting of a foggy winter landscape: it is a field of frozen grass, with bare trees in the distance, half-bathed in fog. The sky is the lightest shade of grey.

January 1st

We report well-immersed in the brand new clouds of the brand new year. And it is what it is, because the year is so very new, everything in it is quite new, including the mud from yesterday's walk, still caked on our boots. We try to hold on to the shininess of the moment.

Digital painting of a quiet blue sky full of wispy, translucent clouds arranged in wavy and twirly sorts of patterns.

January 4th

We report: so far today, no rain, no hail, and the wind is awfully dry too. We have chosen this day for a walk, thinking of the clear weather as great conditions. That it is, but we are feeling the chill on our face very well. We carry a sun glare in the corner of our teary eyes.

Digital painting of a sunset sky, a pastel gradient of blue to pink. There are pink and purple clouds scattered throughout the sky, and two birds flying in the distance. There is a wide expanse of woodlands, dark in the twilight.

January 3rd

We report after a shower of fine hail: we thought the night would have well and truly fallen once the sky cleared. We now realise that since the solstice, we have gained a handful of minutes of sunlight. It is still practically nothing, but we are eager to notice these things.

Digital painting of a blue sky half-full of grey clouds. There are large sweeping ones with precipitation at the top of the frame, and voluminous ones with silver linings in the bottom half. The dark greys are tinted blue.

January 5th

We report in the mid-afternoon: we have been keeping track of the weather acoustically today. It is all in the nuances of the muffled sounds of the rain versus the sharp attack of the hail, and the freezing rain somewhere in between. If there was snow, we missed it.

Digital painting of a vibrant sunset sky: long, pink and purple clouds pooled in the top half of the frame, with the yellow sky showing underneath. Light shines orange in the sheer parts of the clouds.

January 7th

We report: on the way home, we look for high ground to watch the sunset, hoping it is not nightfall when we find it. It feels familiar, walking fast in brisk weather for a moment of colours. We never find the right spot, and we realise our two eyes are not enough to see it well.

Digital painting of a dark, snowy landscape before sunrise. The layer of snow is thin on the fields, and the trees are bare. The sky is cloudy, dark blue, slightly lighter above the horizon.

January 6th

We report in those very cold hours of the almost-morning. The snow is untouched on the fields, barely any fox tracks in the hollows of the furrows when we look carefully. The wind is moving the clouds along, and the sky is already less opaque than it was yesterday.

Digital painting of a sunset sky: tall, voluminous clouds rising into the blue sky, caught in golden light, grey and brown in the shade.

January 11th

We report on the road, after our expert filled the petrol tank. Our fingers jump across clouds behind the window, the way we used to do it as a child; it is still covered in droplets of past heavy rain, weeping sideways from the speed. The wet road looks like it is on fire.

Digital painting of a blue sky in which white, swirly clouds swoop this and that way; the largest one in the middle of the frame features a subtle wavy pattern on top of it.

January 8th

We report: over time, we have taken to collecting the small incidental waves caused by the Kelvin Helmholtz instability. Not too different from four-leaf clovers, we superstitiously imagine that our being there and then, looking for it, is bound to bring us good luck.

Digital painting of a cloudy sky: a large, sweeping veil in the top half of the frame, and smaller shapes with sharper outlines at the bottom. There is pale golden light coming through a gap of pale blue sky, illuminating the edges of the clouds.

January 9th

We report: we think of the weather as alive, always, but today especially. There was a storm last night, and the sky is still sorting itself out from the mess it caused. It is raining disorderlyly, in short bursts. There, between two clouds, the sun finds room enough to shine.

Digital painting of a dark grey sky in which the clouds are woven together in complex braids. The relief in the clouds is especially pronounced.

January 21st

We report under especially cloudy clouds. When the clouds are like this, we have a hard time thinking back to a time when the sky was blue (though it was only yesterday). Curiously, there is not even a hint of precipitation; it is cloudy simply for the sake of it.

Digital painting of a seascape at twilight, dark blue sky overlooking the choppy dark blue sea, with a swath of pink on the horizon.

January 10th

We report: when we come here, we know it will be much windier than everywhere else, and in the winter, the ocean wind is always harsh. It gets in our ears and rearranges every thought and memory we have ever had, until we too feel like wind and water. This is why we come here.

Digital painting of a waning crescent moon closeup in the daytime. The sky is a bright, clear blue, and the moon is in its centre, a few craters and mountains faintly showing.

January 12th

We report: mid-morning, the moon is firmly past its upper culmination, and on its way to the horizon. It is waning, a week away from the new moon. In the nighttime, it is a late visitor we see when we should not be awake; in the daytime, it is a wild cryptid we stumble upon.

Digital painting of a cloudy sky: thick, opaque, dark grey layers. There are pocket-like formations of various sizes bubbling downwards on the top layer of the clouds.

January 13th

We report in generally stormy weather: it is quite windy, and quite rainy as well. Nothing is terrible, but there is a lot of weather happening, and it is reflected in big, liquid clouds spanning several lengths of sky. We notice that some leaves had yet to fall from their trees.

Digital painting of a foggy country road around blue hour. The sky is opaque, with a few birds flying there. There is a road sign, and phone lines running on the side of the road. There are trees in the distance, caught in the fog.

January 14th

We report: there is enough fog that we keep wondering whether there is something wrong with our eyes. We could easily get lost in there. The landmarks we take note of disappear in short distance, and we do not see them whenever we retrace our steps. Luckily, we are not lost.

January 15th

We report in the pink few minutes of sunrise. In the morning, the sun veers more and more northeast from its wintry southeast position - although it is not any warmer that we can tell. We follow a host of sparrows from tree to tree as we are trying to dodge a very thin drizzle.

Digital painting of a blue sky filled with long, wispy, fibrous cirrus clouds flowing from the lower left corner of the frame.

January 16th

We report: when we listened to weather predictions this morning, and no rain was announced for the whole day, we heard our expert snort quietly. It did not take very long for them to be justified. It was true, however, that it sometimes did not rain, and the sky was blue then.

January 17th

We report in the shadow of this large, dark cloud: there was hail earlier, and we know this is hail again. We should perhaps get out of its path, but we feel hypnotised by the way this cloud is eating the light, the ravenous thing. Its underbelly seems to dip from its own weight.

Digital painting of a starry sky, dark blues and purples mixed together in a slight haze. There is the dark silhouette of a skinny, bare tree detaching against the stars.

January 18th

We report: we chance a last look at the sky before going to sleep, out of habit. We think we know it will be too cloudy to see anything, but we can never go to bed without a last look. We remember why that is upon seeing the stars. A bit of fog moves between constellations.

Digital painting of a cloudy sky, dark clouds lit golden from the bottom of the frame, from where diffuse, bright yellow emerges.

January 19th

We report on the train: it is a little too early for the sunset, so the overhead lights are still off, but this surely is sunset light already. The specks of dust and old rain stains on the windows are glitter. Across the aisle, our expert’s face is outlined in gold.

Digital painting of a blue sky with long, wispy white and light grey clouds in the bottom half of the frame. Some of the clouds are combed up and sideways into short curls.

January 20th

We report: this morning, the clouds weigh nothing, and the sun is high. It is so bright outside that it is a while before we can fully open our eyes, but it is hard to feel irritated when the light feels so invigorating. There is excited chatter between two blackbirds in a tree.

Digital painting of a twilight sky: a soft gradient of blue, with a row of undulating, dark blue clouds crossing the frame diagonally. A small crescent, waxing moon glows in the centre.

January 22nd

We report: we heard somewhere that the moon is pulling away from Earth at the rate of 3.8 centimetres a year. All around, we know this will not amount to a noticeable difference over the span of our life. We still think we ought to find a way to bring it back closer to us.

January 23rd

We report at dawn, in a place where it does not snow very often. Our expert attempted to wake us up when the snow was falling in the middle of the night, but we did not even remember it upon waking up. We slept well, so we cannot bring ourselves to regret it too badly.

January 24th

We report: the sun is obscured by the clouds, but there is a bright castaway to the side - almost brighter than the sun itself. The weather has been frazzled all day, so we came out in full rain gear, but the scales will not dip one way or another. We end up needing sunglasses.

Digital painting of a large, developing cloud, mostly dark grey, white where the light is catching it from the side. To the other side, a smaller, white cloud is also rising, and behind it, an anvil is growing into the blue sky.

January 25th

We report from a hollow in a cloud: extremely cold at this height, but everything is light and shade, and we cannot see the ground from here. The cloud where we are is at mid-altitude, but we watch it expand above us, and we watch the lower clouds move very fast beneath our feet.

January 26th

We report: last days of January, and winter still has a long way to go. We see between scrawny trees the extra hour of daylight that has been earned back, and we really, really cling to it. The wind has a whistling, howling quality that we only hear around this time of the year.

Digital painting of a sunset scene: over a pond, the dark silhouettes of trees in dim dusk light. There is a couple of bright red clouds floating in an otherwise clear sky, a gradient of pale blue to orange.

January 27th

We report: all the rivers left their beds last night, and some fields are now ponds, and the ponds are now lakes. All day long, we have seen and heard water around us in places it should not be, and it rained and hailed again, too. It is late when the clouds part for good.

January 28th

We report: this afternoon, most of the clouds are mingling in the distance. This state of things has become a little bit foreign to us over the past few months. We find our mind heading towards spring for a moment, as an experiment, just to test the feel of it.

January 29th

We report during rainy golden hour: we got to a high point expecting a rainbow that is not coming. We can wait a little bit longer if the rain does not get much heavier. In the meantime, we watch a flock of gulls shimmering in the distance, loud even from this far away.

Digital painting of a dusk sky, pale blue, framed with fuzzy, dark blue clouds above and below, while smaller clouds are scattered every which way.

January 30th

We report: it has been humid all winter, in various ways and at different degrees. Tonight, the air is completely saturated with water, and our breath is fogging up blue against the sky. Our expert finds good numbers, like the high dew point, and the 100% relative humidity.

Digital painting of a sunrise sky, filled with long, wispy clouds. There is a gradient of dark blue to bright orange going on, with a bit of purple in the soft curves of the clouds.

January 31st

We report on the dawn of the last day of the month. While we were there in January, we got bruises and scratches, we slept late and forgot our to-do lists. We are still here, alive and well, which bodes alright for the rest of the year. The wind is louder than our whole mind.

Next

December 2025