af1733,,,,,,i think you asked me the question about sunny dowsing, i saw the question, did not answer then, and could not find it later........as to why i posted that....every thing i have read has said the same thing, not to dowse during overcast or rainy conditions....many reasons have been given......my best GUESS as to why this has been taught is that possibly the sun pulls the emanations from the ground much like it pulls water from the ground, which in turn would make the signal much stronger and easier to pick up on.......................as to personal experience, i have found that dowsing during {non-electrical} overcast can be good at times......like dowsing at night......it seems to kill off the magnetics that you will normally encounter....the clouds will make signals very much weaker, but also makes pinpointing easier if you know general location of target as you are not picking up on minute partical pockets of precious metal, ore bodies and such...it also eliminates the need for locating shadow line/vertical line both, and you can go straight to target...........the drawback being that the signal line will be weaker, and not noticable at even short distances, only when very close.......if the bad weather causing the clouds is electrical then i have picked up on many more targets than anyone would ever want to try to dig....i think this is because the electricity in the air bounces off every metallic particle in the ground, and i pick up on this......the best results dowsing for me have always been on a clear night with a big moon.....why ? .. don't know, don't care,,,,,as long as it works for me.......i have approached a couple accomplished dowsers about dowsing during overcast and have more or less been told i am very wrong, that you can not dowse during these conditions, but i have proven to myself it is possible, and quite helpful at the right times.....i posted the ''don't dowse during overcast in response to a newbie's questions about getting started dowsing i think, and figured it would be detrimental to his learning to try it as he either would not pick up on anything or on everything, unless he had the experience to know what to expect, in these different conditions......hope this kind of answers your question................................gldhntr