New Mavic Air pilot, bought a factory refurbished one direct from DJI a few weeks back.

I went out to fly in a place I have flown several times before and consistently have had 14+ satellites.This morning it was light grey and I took off in a bit of a hurry and hovered, then noticed that the quad was in opti mode and had 0 satellites.  I hovered around a bit, landed, and waited a few minutes to see if I would get some connection, but then it started to lightly rain and I packed it up.

Is this normal that an overcast day would cut out all satellite reception?  I am not going to have a chance to get out with the drone in daylight for a few days and I am a little worried there might be something suddenly wrong with the GPS?  Nothing has happened to the drone since I bought it that should have damaged it.

Finally, what is best practice for GPS, should I wait on the ground for them or will they continue to lock in if I hover near the ground.

It’s not uncommon for GPS reception to vary from day to day, even hour to hour.
Suggest you do an Internet search on “how does gps work”. Can be very informative as well as interesting.

Hrm, from the little research I have done it seems quite odd that I would have 0 satellites in the Bay Area of san fran in light cloud / drizzle.  This site states that rain / clouds should have almost no effect for instance and I can't imagine there would be no satellites overhead in sanfran, ca.  http://gpsinformation.net/gpsclouds.htm

HI, we're sorry to know about this situation. I would recommend re-calibrating the IMU and compass of your drone to see if this would help. You may also consider changing the location to isolate the situation. Please ensure that the firmware is up to date to prevent the problem. Kindly keep us posted on the latest progress. Thank you for continued support.

I've used GPS technology for various purposes, including geocaching, for a good number of years. Cloud cover, rain, and other weather phenomenon have little or no effect on GPS signals. Tree cover or buildings in the immediate area can decrease the signal and/or block some satellites from being received. Whatever prevented your drone from locking on to any GPS satellites was almost certainly unrelated to weather.

Larry

Unfortunately I have spent all daylight hours yesterday and will spend all day today either on the road, or practically right on top of an airport.  I might see about taking the drone out at lunch today to see if it can at least lock onto GPS, although I am not sure how that will work since I am in a no fly zone right on top of an airport.

The typical six-year-old can fly a Mavic Air, it takes many hours of study and practice to become a Mavic Air pilot. The technology is only as good as your understanding of it.

Thanks so much for the offensive comment, I am happy you have such a deep understanding of me.
Anyway, I think I figured out what the problem may have been.  Since I was in a hurry and didn't have wifi connection I skipped the suggested update to the flysafe precision fly map.  I forgot this had come up.  When I went out to test it today at lunch, the request to update the map came up again, and out of curiosity I declined it again.

When I went to fly, 0 satellites, and it was in OPTI mode.  I let it sit about 5 mins, no satellites.  Then I turned everything off, closed up the app and restarted, this time downloading the map update.  This time by the time I got the to flight screen I had 16 satellites, which climbed shortly to 18.  That is all I wanted to know, that my gps was not broken, so I shut it all down.

Is the gps supposed to be disabled when the maps are out of date?  The maps were not incredibly old, they were updated a few weeks back.  This seems quite odd and unsafe to me.  It is certainly possible this was just a coincidence.