April 2026

Digital painting of a seascape: the sky is blue, and the ocean is as well. There are white clouds bubbling up from a strip of grey over the horizon. The sea only has faint waves wrinkling its surface.

April 2nd

We report: the way it often is on those days that are yet at the cusp of seasons, the sea got too warm, too soon, and is steaming up into clouds as a result. The ocean has to spend some time relearning sunny days, just like we do. The breeze is only a one on the Beaufort scale.

Digital painting of a voluminous, slightly fuzzy cloud caught in golden sunset light, with the blue sky in the background.

April 1st

We report late afternoon, as the clouds are parting ahead of the night. The light grows warmer while the air gets colder. We will not be here when the sun sets, so we can only trust that it will all go well, in the correct order, the right direction and angle.

Digital painting of a dark, starry night sky. There are dark grey cirrus billowing above the horizon; the horizon is a dark patch of grass. The stars are numerous, glowing faintly.

April 4th

We report in the middle of the night: following up on a solar eruption in one of the sunspot regions our expert has been watching, we are expecting a geomagnetic storm. So far, we have only observed a minor radio blackout, and slightly heightened geomagnetic activity.

Digital painting of a dark grey, cloudy sky. There is dim light barely filtering through some gaps, but the rest of the sky is mostly opaque.

April 3rd

We report sometime in the morning, after sunrise. It is a small, dim pocket of enduring grey drizzle prolonging a layer of the night. Unlike the rain we have had lately, this one has been quietly going for hours. The staticky buzz of it settles something in our mind.

Digital painting of a sunrise: in a pink and yellow sky, a couple of small, jagged pink clouds are floating. The sun is hovering above some dark roofs and some phone lines running through the frame.

April 5th

We report at a sleepy hour of morning: our expert pulled us from bed before the sky had even begun to lighten. We dozed off a few times before going out, and several more while the sun was rising. Thinking about it now, we cannot be certain we were not asleep the whole time.

Digital painting of a countryside landscape: a dark grey, cloudy sky over some fields of grass. The trees on the horizon are just growing some leaves. There are phone lines running across the fields.

April 7th

We report: for the first time this year, nettle stings on our ankles. We should have known there would be nettle when we saw flowering ribwort plantain on the path. It is a little windy, a little rainy-like, but the afternoon rolls on despite - or thanks to - the uncertainty.

Digital painting of a bright blue sky filled with cirrus, translucent clouds of ice creating long, tortuous, white shapes.

April 6th

We report: when we see cirrus appear in the sky, it is almost always out of thin air. At first, the shapes make sense; the wind shear pulling a line and drawing arabesques. If we look away, however, we lose all hope of understanding what happened. We can accept that.

Digital painting of a cloudy sky, shades of grey and blue. There are small waves running across the clouds, a pattern that would more often be seen on the surface of water. There are a few birds flying in the sky.

April 11th

We report: the clouds are strange, so we have to observe them for a while. Only a wrinkle in weather, but we spend our whole life looking for those wrinkles; we cannot leave it be. These clouds seem to be developing asperitas, a variety of clouds that always catches our eye.

Digital painting of a pre-dawn scene: above dark fields and trees, the sky is blue and lilac. There is a waning gibbous moon there, as well as a few sparse, pale clouds.

April 8th

We report: the sky has been mostly clear at night lately. It gets warm during the day, but it is still a fleeting thing. Even at the peak of temperature, we can feel that the ground is cold beneath our feet. In the last hours of the night, the flowers shiver under the moonlight.

Digital painting of a sunset sky: dark clouds cover most of the sky while in the lower tier of the frame, bright yellow sunlight tints the underbelly of the clouds orange. The clouds are thick, but thinner and smaller around where the sun is.

April 9th

We report: the sun now sets well into the evening again. It will rise in the early morning, so that the rest of the day, bracketed in between sunrise and sunset, may know daylight throughout. The mid-afternoon sunsets already seem distant to us, though they were mere months ago.

Digital painting of a sunset scene at sea: there is a large cloud blocking the yellow setting sun, extending both sides as thin, flat clouds on the horizon. The sun still manages to reach around, glowing orange. Clear sky, calm sea.

April 21st

We report: we are here when the sun falls into the sea, and once it has gotten very deep below the surface, nothing remains of the sky. Meanwhile, the waves never stop rolling; in the dark, they look much colder than when our nose was burning in the sunshine.

Digital painting of a blue sky mostly covered with a thin sheet of white clouds, slightly striated. The sun shines through, with an iridescent crown glowing around it.

April 10th

We report: we cannot remember the correct term for this optical phenomenon. We want to call it a halo, so we do, but our expert does remember: it is a corona. The difference is in the way light interacts with the clouds, they say. Refraction for halos, diffraction for coronas.

Digital painting of a dusk scene: the sky is a pastel gradient of blue to yellow, partially obscured by blue clouds. There are two houses with lit windows in the background, surrounded by some trees. In the foreground, a lit street lamp, more trees.

April 12th

We report: it somehow happened that a few street lamps turned on right as we walked past them. It also is true that the time is around nightfall. There could be no links between our walking by and the ignition of the lamps. Our expert is convinced that this is some sort of omen.

Digital painting of a sunset scene: the sun is disappearing behind a green hill, with a few trees and a phone line running between poles in the distance. The clouds are gauzy, bright pink around the sun, white on top, sweeping the sky.

April 13th

We report in the cold evening: the sun has gathered pink clouds around itself - for warmth, surely. Coming down the hill, the chill has our lungs feeling raw. We put many of our scarves away last week, foolishly thinking we would not need them anymore. Our hubris knows no bounds.

Digital painting of a bright blue sky filled with scattered, scraggly white clouds. There is a rainbow crossing the frame, over the clear sky.

April 14th

We report: at the moment, we can only see the part of the sky in which the rain clouds are absent. Although we know it is raining on the other end of the rainbow, it is odd seeing it glow so well in the naked blue sky. It stays bright for a long time, fixed in the sunshine.

Digital painting of a mostly overcast sky with a variety of shades: dark, grey-blue to the left-hand side, going into light grey and white where the clouds are crumbling into the blue sky. There is a common swift flying in the middle of the frame.

April 15th

We report: it is still early morning, something a little fragile in the moment. We can tell that this is one of these few seconds of life we might remember years down the road, for no reason that we could pinpoint. A lone swift is feeding on the aeroplankton.

Digital painting of a dusk sky: it is getting dark, but the gauzy cirrus are still bearing some slight purple and pink tones. There is Jupiter glowing in the sky.

April 16th

We report: spring night sky in the Northern Hemisphere. Venus vanishes behind the horizon soon after sunset, Jupiter remains for a bit. When it gets dark, before midnight, we see Procyon and Capella, Castor and Pollux, Sirius, Betelgeuse and Aldebaran (our favourite neighbours).

Digital painting of a sunrise sky: behind the clouds, it is a pale blue, but it is mostly overcast. The clouds are long, a bit scraggly, shades of pastel pink, bright pink, and purple, with another layer of blue-grey on top.

April 17th

We report: lately, there is a lot of pink in the sky. It is the last bright colour we see in the evening, and the first one we see in the morning. It rains over it, today - not much, but it washes the pink off, and we watch it flow down the drains. It leaves a chill in the air.

Digital painting of a wide sky, large cirrus spanning the width of the frame, with cumulus moving in rows in the bottom third of it.

April 18th

We report: today again, there was rain in the morning. It went away before noon, and ever since, the sky has been especially large and bright. We are standing against the wind, so the clouds are moving towards us and over our head. The air is light, full of pollen.

Digital painting of a dark cloudy sky. The clouds are churning and curling in a chaos of all shades of grey.

April 19th

We report on a windy afternoon: there are all these trees which are still painstakingly growing leaves, and flowers too. We can tell this is not an easy day for them. All those flowery trees are shaking, and the petals are flying all over, forming a spring blizzard.

Digital painting of a night scene: dark trees stand out against a diffuse background. The sky is a dark blue, getting lighter in the lower half, where it is lit by city lights.

April 20th

We report about a dank night in city lights: there is a sheen to the sky, pearlescent and vaguely eerie in the past-midnight brightness. Impossible to tell the hour, if not for the stillness of the world. We stumble, spooking a cat into hissing and crab-walking down the street.

Digital painting of a sunny countryside landscape: the sky is blue, with a strip of small, fluffy white clouds agglomerated together. There is a green field dotted with small, white flowers, and a line of trees on the horizon.

April 22nd

We report about the sun, very high in the sky. Well into April, midday, this is where we expect it to be, but we had not noticed the height of the sun in some time. We were thinking about the beginning of spring for weeks, but we missed how it settled: windy, sunny, very green.

Digital painting of a cloudy sky, an agglomeration of grey clouds. The sun is shining through the cracks, creating a bright, yet soft glow blending the shadows.

April 23rd

We report: stationary high pressure zones have been keeping the weather very mild and easy around here. There is enough air flow circulating that there are fluctuations here and there, but only just. Despite this all, the sky is still new and different every day.

Digital painting: in a dark blue, cloudy night sky, a waxing gibbous moon is glowing above a large body of water. Its reflection is broken up by small ripples in the water.

April 24th

We report: now just past its first quarter, the moon is doing really well in getting brighter and larger in our sky. We would be very concerned if it ever did badly in that endeavour, which means we have to appreciate the smooth process of the cycle now and then.

Digital painting of a sunset sky: pink, gauzy clouds arching over the whole sky, and smaller, darker clouds pooling at the bottom of the frame, taking on a purple tint.

April 25th

We report about this sunset: for the first time this spring, the evening wind is not getting our nose to run. Later on, when the sun is long gone, it obviously gets much colder. But at this moment, the breeze is kind, and we cannot help but feel really good about it.

Digital painting of a blue sky in which tall clouds are floating, following a path towards the horizon. The clouds are grey and white, brightly lit in the sunshine.

April 26th

We report: the clouds are moving away from us, along an invisible path on which we cannot follow them. We looked at the surface pressure maps carefully this morning, the red and blue lines, the triangles and the half circles, the isobars. We almost predicted the wind direction.

Digital painting of a cloudy sky: a pale grey, covered in darker clouds. Those dark clouds are mostly smooth and flat, following the wind as though combed through. There are some scraggly clouds in the bottom right corner of the frame.

April 27th

We report: the conditions are so stable that even when the clouds dissipate, they form again in the exact same spot, in the exact same shape. We were here for hours, and the sky looked so very similar each time we compared it; our sense of time became more and more nebulous.

Digital painting of a dusk sky, dark blue with a smudge of a pale cloud stretching upwards by the waxing gibbous moon. The moon is glowing yellow; there are three swifts flying high around it.

April 28th

We report: the moon again, now only a few days away from revealing itself completely. The swifts are flying in and out of a swarm of midges, and later, we see a bat as well. The evenings feel more and more alive and busy, like we are missing out when we go to sleep.

Digital painting of a sunset sky above dark roofs: pastel blue and orange, with smudges of dark orange and pink, and then bright yellow and orange on top. There is a bird perched on an antenna above a chimney.

April 29th

We report: the sunset lures us outside. We huff and puff a little, but we put our shoes back on, and as soon as we see more of the sky, we know it was worth it. We walk up the street to look for the horizon, accompanied by a jackdaw. The colours slowly leech out.

Digital painting of a mountainous landscape, peaks covered in green trees and wide expanses of grass under the blue sky. There are a few white clouds floating over the mountains, one of them casting a blue shadow on the trees.

April 30th

We report: we too were, some moments ago, in the shadow of a cloud. Because it is not much of a windy day, it was minutes before we were in the sunshine again. In the undergrowth, the humidity makes the warm air thicker, and turns it cold at the drop of a hat.

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March 2026