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I have been in this hobby now for about 6 years. It varies from year to year. Up until about a 1.5 -2 years ago we had been having a long drought. For that time the sky was clear fairly often. In the last 9 months to a year it has been very cloudy and overcast. Much more than normal.
You will find summer warmer months are cloudier than winter cooler months.
Bureau of meterology actually has charts of this sort of thing. As I recall August is the clearest month with most number of clear nights. And either Jan of Feb is the worst with the most number of cloudy nights.
It does also depend on where you are. Coastal may be more likely to be cloudy than inland a bit.
I live in the beginnings of the mountains and it tends to be a bit more cloudy than down in the plains.
I also have a dark site weekender on the western side of the Great Dividing Range. It will be far more often clear than the eastern side.I would drive from overcast Sydney to there and be greeted with crystal clear all night no cloud skies many times. Occassionally that reversed but not for long (maybe 6months to a year).
So weather patterns shift around a fair bit making a clear statement about it not so easy.
Certainly at the moment perhaps due to La Nina we are experiencing the least number of clear nights I have seen in the last 6 years and it is not typical so take heart.
In July/August you can get a run of clear nights and get maybe 9 in a row.
In Jan at my dark site - this year, whilst Sydney was cloudy all the time I got 11 out of 12 nights were clear, most of them completely clear all night.
Western side of the Great Dividing Range - that's where it seems to be clearest more often and the prevailing weather comes from the west which is from the outback or Western Australia.
Greg.
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