A Bit of Weather

It seems that whenever I am running an adventure, I tend to forget a lot of the details which help bring a scene alive, and often some that might make a definite difference in the party's actions. One of the most common things I forget is weather and season. I can't tell you how many outdoor adventures I've run that take place on an apparently warm, sunny, spring/summer day since I gave no details otherwise.

Well, recently I thought up some simple tables to help myself remember to include details like the season, air temperature, and weather. First is, of course, a simple d12 roll to see what the current month is, unless I have already decided beforehand what time of year the adventure begins in.

Next I have a seasonal table to give approximate air temperatures. I use a subjective scale that loosely ties to actual temperatures.

Degrees Description
------- -----------
110+ Roasting
100-109 Very Hot
90-99 Hot
80-89 Very Warm
70-79 Warm
60-69 Cool
50-59 Very Cool
40-49 Cold
30-39 Very Cold
20-29 Freezing
10-19 Below Freezing
0-9 Zero
less Below Zero

This way you don't have to give them exact degrees, just a loose description: "It is a warm summer evening..."

Then I set up a daily temperature by month scale like so:

JAN Very Cold
FEB Cold
MAR Very Cool
APR Cool
MAY Warm
JUN Very Warm
JUL Hot
AUG Very Warm
SEP Warm
OCT Cool
NOV Very Cool
DEC Cold

These temperatures represent the basic "high" of the day. Morning and evening temps are one step cooler, night temps are two steps cooler.

Now we come to the actual weather table itself. It doesn't have very unusual weather, that will come into play when I intend to have it, but it is good to give a reasonably realistic variation from day to day with a simple roll of 2d6:

2-3 Stormy (blizzard, tornadoes, etc)
4-5 Rainy (or snowing; also one step colder)
6 Colder than normal (two steps colder)
7 Sunny and fair
8 Hotter than normal (two steps hotter)
9-10 Windy
11-12 Same as Yesterday


And that's it. I haven't put it into practice yet, but I hope to if I can ever get a local game going...

EDITED TO ADD:

Why aren't my tables lining up right? I'm using the "code" html tag, but the spaces aren't being counted. Can anyone help with that? Please?