20 May 2017

An Evernote Workshop (8): Recording the Weather

Do you keep a diary? And if you do, do you write about the weather?

I write about the weather all the time:

“Today was very hot. It was real bushfire weather. We kept expecting to hear fire truck sirens blaring through the village.”

“Today Gemma-Rose saw snow for the very first time. We stood in a line at the window watching the flakes fluttering down. We forgot all about the morning chores. Nobody could tear their eyes away from the snow.”

“Another hot and dry day. We need rain desperately. Everything is covered with red dust. It hardly seems worth cleaning the house. Just as we remove one layer of dust, another appears.”

The weather is the background to our lives. It affects what we do and how we feel. When we think about the weather of past days, months or years, all kinds of associated memories and feelings come flooding back.

“Do you remember the year it snowed on Dad’s birthday? Everyone was dressed up – we were going to Father Jim’s anniversary of ordination dinner – and I didn’t want anyone to get wet and dirty in the snow. I really wish I hadn’t worried about your clothes. I should have let you make snowballs and have fun. I mean, it’s not like it snows every year.”

This morning, I said, “It feels very mild for this time of year. It’s hard to believe that winter is only a couple of weeks away.” And I began to wonder what the weather was like this time last year. And when did we have that really cold winter, the one where my ribs ached all the time because I shivered so much? If I really want to know the answers to those questions, I could flip back through my diaries and find out. And if I did that, I’m sure I’d soon be enjoying lots of weather associated memories.

READ  An Evernote Workshop: (3) Notes, Notebooks, Tags

So I think it’s worth recording the weather in our diaries. We could just describe it with words. Or, if we’re keeping an Evernote journal, we could add some screenshots from a weather app or website as well:

We could also include some screenshots of our historical weather:


Hey, look at all that information! There are numbers, degrees, percentages, graphs, averages, records, times, lengths, speeds, moon phases and more. Doesn’t that look a lot like real life maths? If our kids are also interested in the weather, we could add these screenshots to our Evernote homeschool records journal as well as our diaries. We could label the notes as maths. (Could they be labelled geography as well?)

By the way, we don’t live in North Pole. I just chose this place because I like its name. It’s not THE North Pole. This North Pole is in Western Australia. Looking at the weather details, I can see that it’s a much warmer place than our hometown!

So do you record weather details in your diary or homeschool records book? I wonder if you have a good weather story. And what’s the weather like at your place at the moment?

Sue Elvis

I'm an Australian blogger, podcaster, and Youtuber. I write and speak about unschooling, parenting and family life. I'm also the author of the unschooling books 'Curious Unschoolers', 'Radical Unschool Love' and ‘The Unschool Challenge’. You'll find them on Amazon!

3 Comments

  1. We had three different sorts of weather already this morning in San Francisco! The weather in our ‘hood was 53 and very foggy as we headed to the Farmers’ Market this morning before the sun came up; no moon. At the farmers’ market over the hill, not a smidge of fog. The moon greeted us as we exited the bus with our favorite driver, a lady named Jim told us goodbye. On the way home, one hilltop over from our own, it was only a little foggy, but noticeably colder. Back in our own hood, the sunbeams are playing games with the last few wafts of fog.

    It’s great to have time to read your posts again Sue! Thanks for the inspiration for things to record in our home schooling/life experiences!

  2. We had three different sorts of weather already this morning in San Francisco! The weather in our ‘hood was 53 and very foggy as we headed to the Farmers’ Market this morning before the sun came up; no moon. At the farmers’ market over the hill, not a smidge of fog. The moon greeted us as we exited the bus with our favorite driver, a lady named Jim told us goodbye. On the way home, one hilltop over from our own, it was only a little foggy, but noticeably colder. Back in our own hood, the sunbeams are playing games with the last few wafts of fog.

    It’s great to have time to read your posts again Sue! Thanks for the inspiration for things to record in our home schooling/life experiences!

    Eeep forgot to sign!

    • Hamilton,

      It’s good to see you back on my blog!

      53 degrees? I just did some converting (because we use the celsius system) and found out that it’s about 53 degrees here in NSW, Australia, at the moment! It’s 9 am and the sun has just appeared from behind the clouds. We’ve had a lot of fog recently. We drive up the hill to our village to find that everything has disappeared under a blanket of thick mist.

      I loved reading the descriptions of your morning weather. “… the sunbeams are playing games with the last few wafts of fog.” I can just imagine that!

      Thank you so much for stopping by and sharing your weather story!

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