Alex,
You raise an interesting point about what the Met office and BBC Weather class as a clear night. At the time of writing, both of them say it is clear outside (a single moon with no clouds on their websites) and yet at the moment it is at least 85% cloud cover- if only someone from these institutions could go outside and look up to check!
It would be interesting to know their definition of a clear night sky! Satellite 24 indicates a gap coming- we wait and see…
Cheers,
-Paul