Thanks, seachnasaiigh!  I actually thought about cubes, then thought maybe sky domes would work better.  I used DreamlandModel's and Flinks, but, the UV's are backward for what I want for now so I loaded a primative ball (hi res) and it seems to work better.  I'm also using a couple plane primatives for some single clouds.  Got some test renders cookin, things are starting to look good.  Still I like the fact that you can get "cloud" shadows on the ground, but I do think I'm getting somewhere as for what I'm looking for.

Can you show me your settings you got?  For now I created some clouds (copied/pasted/edited Flinks clouds from Sky 2, turned them black/white for both visual and trans maps), haven't started playing with nodes but what you got there (your image) looks excellent!

BTW while the shadows look natural on the building/ground (darkness), I don't like how dark it is on the clouds, I believe you can turn "recieve shadows" off, but is there a way to lighten the effect some?

...wolfie