A thought experiment for you:
Do a Google search for “atmospheric movies.”
Check out how many of the movies had posters with some sort of fog, weather, smoke, or translucence in them. Of the ones that don’t, if you’ve seen the movie, ask yourself, “Is some element of the weather a factor in the story?”
Now ask yourself if you liked most of those movies. You can, of course, do the same thing for novels.
Your book doesn’t have to start with a dark and stormy night, but it doesn’t actually hurt.
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