After being stuck all morning in the caliginous fumes of City Hall, this afternoon unfolded with such splendor outside my nook in North Baltimore that I hope all of you had the same opportunity as I did to look up – and see the sky!

It was a full-throated mackerel sky, famous in legend for its purity and relative rarity. Row after row of small, high, rounded puffs of white set against a backdrop of lustrous blue.

We’re not meteorologists, but our quick consult with Wikipedia indicated that the city was experiencing a cirrocumulus sky that, indeed, did look like the scales of a giant silver mackerel. (Experts are welcome to weigh in.)

Such a sky is a sign of winter and indicates fair but colder weather coming. “Mackerel in the sky, three days dry,” goes the saying.

With shafts of liquid sun illuminating the gold, yellow, red and ochre leaves, I walked around the block and took these shots from three different directions.

Now I look forward to discovering how Brew poets (Usha? Dave?) might put words to the images.