Today it is small wonder to have a star named after you or to possess a plot of land on the Moon. However, I never heard of personal weather passports. Such documents containing data on weather of last 100 years, are already available from Belarusian meteocenter. I went there to learn more about the new service. Nina Kuzmuk, chief at one of departments of the meteocenter, says: “Weather passports are first and foremost designed for romantic and sentimental people who value all their recollections related to some days important to them. This can be birthday, or wedding day, or any other event. We check our archives and put down weather conditions of these days — humidity, direction and force of wind, air temperature, cloudiness. Credibility of information is confirmed by seal and director’s signature.It has turned out that by customer’s order passport cover can come in various versions: romantically ornamented for newly-wed, with funny pictures — for kids, with Autumn theme — devoted to Knowledge Day (September 1st). In special cases the meteocenter can make a weather passport for foreign citizens — several residents of Russia and Ukraine have already become owners of such documents. Sometimes the passport is supplemented with some interesting information related to weather. For example, with folk omens. If an event took place on September 24th, for instance, it is put down in weather passport that this was the day of autumnal equinox called the Autumn Fedora — “On Fedora day summer ends and autumn starts.” Trees get yellow within several days and cold rains are frequent in this season.
Weather passports allow to take a look into the past. Some wish to remember what the weather was like on Epiphany Day, or on graduation or even on the day of their first romantic date. And a weather passport can become something more important than just weather reminder: one young man who lives in Germany now, was presented with a weather passport with cover photo of maternity clinic in Minsk where he was born, on his birthday.
By the way, why shouldn’t foreign tourists have such reminders of days spent in Belarus? For today we can recall the atmosphere of any journey of the past!
by Olga Korban
