sunset denial

We all expected a spectacular sunset but it didn't happen and none of us could understand why not. The situation was right for it, super right for it in fact, an extra good layer of clouds from one end to the other as far as you can see all uniformly about 1,000 feet higher like a quilt of clouds viewed from the bottom that goes forever. All that water up there collecting, right there above our heads and the clouds so stingy with it. It could dump a flood any second but instead drizzles only faintly in and out sporadically. We watched the sun set, saw the light behind the clouds go lower, the sky go darker and that's all. No color light show. Just darkness from gray.

I figured out what happened.

The cloud quilt is so vast continuing west straight over the foothills,  covering evenly the mountains behind them and still just that evenly covering the mountains behind those, that it actually follows the curve of the earth at least the portion of arc of our viewing, to the end of the state perhaps, maybe even through Utah. The sun never does slip under the clouds, can never illuminate from beneath them as usual so it stays concealed behind the cloud screen all the way down to darkness. Our down. The clouds could clear by the time the edge of night reaches California where the clouds may break and the sun shine through beneath as it as the earth rotates away from it.

These are somebody else's clouds I'm using to show the sun going down with no color, like Planet Dreary.

The next day, yesterday, breaks in the cloud cover allow the usual glorious thing. With the window open the light show demands your attention. 

Conclusion: No breaks in clouds mean dreary sunsets.