Spicing up your family history

A friend's wedding photo shows the happy couple leaving the church on 20 March 1954 at St Catharines, while snow flakes fall like extra confetti. You can't help but notice -- otherwise its just another wedding photo.

In Canada, where practically every conversation starts with the weather, it's simple to add weather information to a family history event thanks to the National Climate Data and Information Archive, operated and maintained by Environment Canada. Free access to official climate and weather observations for many locations is avaiable at the Climate Data Online. Hour by hour weather reports include temperature, dew point, humidity, wind direction and speed, visibility, humidex, windchill and a one of two word statement of the weather condition, often back to the 1950s. Daily data go back to the 1880s for several locations, and to 1840 for Toronto.

For the date of the wedding I found that although 3.8cm of snow fell that day the temperature remained a couple of degrees above freezing. The snow likely didn't settle for long, but they may not have noticed!