Personalised “What was the weather like?” print — the real weather on your big day

The print looks it up for you: enter the date, from 1 January 1984 to yesterday, and the town, and the weather on that day appears — the highest temperature in large figures, the sky, then the lowest temperature, the wind, the rain, sunrise and sunset and, depending on the style, the moon and the humidity. It comes from weather archives, never invented, so every print is different.

The weather on the big day: what the weather was doing the day the child was born, or on the day of a birthday you’re celebrating — bright sunshine, pouring rain or snow. It is a gift that gets people talking, that nobody already has, and it suits the parents of a newborn, an 18th, 30th or 40th birthday, or anyone who remembers every detail of their own story.

From two sources. From 1 July 2008, World Weather Online, hour by hour: the temperature, the type of weather, the rain, the wind and its gusts, the humidity. Before that, and whenever World Weather Online does not answer, NASA POWER, NASA’s data service: temperatures, rain and snow, wind and humidity come from the MERRA-2 reanalysis, and sunshine from satellite estimates, from which the cloud cover is worked out. The source is printed at the foot of the poster.

They are reconstructions of the weather in that place, built from the observations of the day, not the reading of a weather station round the corner; before 2008, they hold for a grid square of about fifty kilometres for temperature, rain and wind, and about a hundred for sunshine. A family memory may therefore differ by a degree or a shower. Nothing is made up or touched up: the print shows what the archives say.

Because the satellite estimate of sunshine, which tells us whether it was a fine day, begins on 1 January 1984 in NASA’s data. Before that, we would know the temperature but not the sky, and a weather print that cannot say whether the sun was out is not much of one. For an older wedding, choose the date of a wedding anniversary you have celebrated since.

The day’s highest: it is the one people remember, whether it was a summer’s day or a winter’s one. The lowest is printed further down, among the readings, as “12° / 22°”.

They are names from the Beaufort scale, which ranks the wind from 0, calm, to 12, hurricane force: a light breeze blows at 6 to 11 km/h, a strong breeze at 39 to 49 km/h. The print gives the average wind speed on the day and the direction it came from; the Weather report and Almanac styles also give its name on that scale.

They are calculated for the place and the date, in local time on the day, summer time included, to the minute. The moon, in the styles that show it, is the moon of that day at noon, universal time: its phase and how much of it was lit.

Yes: the occasion is written out in full, as you choose — “The day we met”, “Our wedding day”, “The day it all began” — or in your own words. A wedding in the rain already has its line: rain on your wedding day is good luck, as the saying goes.

Four: Sky, the day’s sky painted large, its colours, clouds, rain and snow following the recorded weather; Weather report, the old-style TV forecast, with a flat-colour symbol and the temperature in a round badge; Almanac, an old observatory’s weather log, in sepia ink; and Minimal, a finely drawn page of figures, with the path of the sun and the wind rose.

A4, 30 × 40, 40 × 60, 50 × 70 and 70 × 100 cm: standard frame sizes, easy to find. Optional wooden frame on the A4 and 30 × 40, in black, white or natural, with acrylic glass; the larger sizes ship rolled, to frame at home.

250 g/m² satin matte paper, lightfast pigment inks. Printed to order in our workshop up to 40 × 60, by our printer beyond that. Shipped rolled, in a sturdy long cardboard box; the A4 travels flat, in a stiff card envelope.

Yes. The print-ready file contains all five sizes, each as a PDF and as a 300 dpi PNG — ten files in all, by a download link sent after payment, to print wherever you like.

Your poster is dispatched within 48 hours, then delivered in six to seven days to Ireland and the rest of the EU (four to five in France) — to your home or a pickup point, home delivery only for the 50 × 70 and 70 × 100. For a fixed date, allow ten days outside France. The download link for the print-ready file is sent as soon as payment is confirmed.