“Wasn’t it raining?” The weather on the day that mattered

The argument over dessert

Tenth wedding anniversary, dessert arrives, and someone says: “What lovely weather we had that day!” Someone else objects: “Lovely? It rained through the whole photo session.” Auntie Monica swears she was boiling in her hat. The uncle remembers the umbrella he held over the bride for an hour. The bride smiles and says nothing. She remembers the dress, her shaking hands, her father's voice. The weather she never looked at.

We know the date by heart; it's the one inside the rings. The weather we tell stories about, and everyone tells it their own way. What we don't always realise is that it can be checked.

The weather: what you keep of a day without knowing it

Ask someone to tell the story of a birth, their own or their child's, and there will be snow on the maternity car park, the heatwave that made the last week endless, the rain that made the taxi late. The weather is in almost every memory, like a background colour. It is almost never in the presents.

That's what makes it a good gift: unlike other gifts, it gets people talking, and few people already have one. For parents who already own every photograph of that day, it offers a different angle: not what you saw, but what you felt stepping outside.

The “What was the weather like?” poster

The poster does exactly that: you give the date, anywhere from 1 January 1984 up to yesterday, and the town, and the weather for that day is printed. The high temperature very large, the sky (“Bright sun”, “Snow”, “Rain”), then the low, the wind, the rain, sunrise and sunset and, depending on the style, the moon and the humidity. It comes from weather archives, never from a random draw, so every poster is different.

The occasion is written out in full, however you like: “The day you were born”, “The day we got married”, “The day it all began”. For a rain-soaked wedding you can write: “Rain on the big day is supposed to bring luck.”

What the poster knows, and what it doesn't

Let's be precise, because that weather will be printed. The values are reconstructions of the weather at that spot, built from the day's observations: they are not the reading from a weather station on the corner of your street. A family memory may therefore differ by a degree or a shower, and for the oldest dates the reading applies to an area of about fifty kilometres around the town. Nothing is invented or touched up: the poster prints what the archives say, and the credits are shown on the product page, under the preview.

Why not before 1984? Because the satellite estimate of sunshine, the one that says whether it was fine, begins on 1 January 1984. Before that we would know the temperature but not the sky, and a poster that can't say whether the sun was out isn't much of a poster. For an older wedding, pick the date of an anniversary celebrated since: it's just as true, and it's worth celebrating.

For a birth, a wedding, a birthday

For new parents, it's the day of the birth: the temperature, the sky and, depending on the style, the moon of the day. For a couple, it's the wedding, the day they met, or the date of an anniversary they're celebrating. For someone turning eighteen, thirty or forty, it's the weather on the day they were born, in the place they were born, which of course they never knew. And for the person who keeps track of their own story, it's a gift they'll enjoy checking, and perhaps correcting.

Four styles for four moods

Sky paints the sky of the day large: its colours, its clouds, its rain or snow follow the recorded weather. Bulletin recalls the old television forecast, a flat-colour pictogram and the temperature in a lozenge. Almanac is the logbook of an old observatory, in sepia ink. Minimal is a page of very fine figures, with the sun's path and the wind rose. You compare them in the preview before choosing, and that is exactly what will be printed.

How long before the date

Orders leave the workshop within two days. After that, count another four to five days of transit inside France, or six to seven to reach the rest of Europe, and add a cushion if the date matters. When the day is closing in, the print-ready file is sent to you as soon as payment is confirmed, and a photo counter or a print shop can print it.