December 2012 GLOBAL CLOUD COVER

Has anyone noticed all of the major cloud cover all over the planet the last few weeks. Almost every major city seems to be covered with clouds blocking the view to the sky. I love astronomy and I had planned to do some imaging through my telescope on the days leading up to and the day of the alignment. Being that i have not used this particular camera mount, i wanted to do a few dry runs to tweak my shots. Problem is, every day for the past two weeks, we have had these low clouds blocking the view. Has anyone noticed anything similar in the area you live? I checked several weather apps and zoomed out to see the whole planet and was very suprised to see clouds blocking the view on almost every continent.