Planning around weather is wonderful, but often I lack the ability to do so, or more specifically the constraints of my travel usually obviate planning. Case in point - I'm going to a conference in Pisa (as in, the Leaning Tower of...) in a couple of weeks. A red-eye flight (thankfully, business class) will get me there on a mid-day Wed, which is the first day of the meeting ending with an evening reception running beyond blue hour. Friday night there's a gala dinner, and I fly out as the meeting ends, mid-day Saturday. So, that leaves Thrusday evening for some blue hour shooting. TPE is great for locations and landmarks, but if it's cloudy – or worse, raining – on my one available evening, I'm basically SOL.

My experience with weather forecasting has been that anything over 24 hours out is usually not very reliable (that's certainly true in New England! – I've come to rely on the weather rock in our yard more than the meteorologists...if the rock is warm, it's sunny; if the rock is wet, it's raning; if the rock is white, it's snowing). Given that, even if the forecast isn't good, the weather may actually turn out just fine, and thus I'm reluctant to leave the camera at home (the 1D X, that is; I'd bring the M6 + 11-22 no matter what). But that means I may end up schlepping a backback full of camera gear to another continent and have little to show for it.