It's a mild morning in Trinity, N.L., on Feb. 16, 2018 — a temperature of –1 C with some gently falling flakes of snow.

But according to the post that pops up on the Slade & Kelson Twitter account, it was a little more blustery 200 years ago.

Monday 16th Feby 1818 Wind North West Freezing very Hard —@SladeKelsonTB

St. John's-based lawyer Geoff Budden has been tweeting a daily real-time entry from the journals of fish merchant William Kelson for the past two years.

And for Kelson, a manager with the Slade Merchant Company in Trinity from 1809 to 1851, the weather was extremely important. And he wrote about it a lot.

"Which, considering he was managing a fishing enterprise, makes sense," said Budden, who earned a degree in Newfoundland history — during which he first encountered Kelson's journals — before deciding to pursue law.

Jan. 22, 1850, was cloudy, gloomy and cold. The Kelson and Slade diaries have been preserved, transcribed and posted online by Memorial University. Budden says posting a daily tweet is the easy part, and their hard work deserves a lot of credit. (collections.mun.ca)

"What I found fascinating is there's a lot of commentary about ships coming and going to various European ports to various Newfoundland ports," he said.

"There's an account of the great fire of St. John's of 1817 as the news got to Trinity several days later."

Thursday 13th Nov 1817 Boats from Perlican Brings Accounts by way of Harbor Grace of a number of Merchants Stores and Houses being burnt at St John’s —@SladeKelsonTB

"There are tragedies when people drown, or houses burn, and little bits of human interest stuff from the perspective of a quite busy Newfoundland community and fishing centre 200 years ago."

cold as the night was as rough & severe as any we have had the winter the Glass was down 17 below the cypher —@SladeKelsonTB

Budden enjoyed other Twitter accounts devoted to posting from historical diaries in real time, and decided to track down the journal he had discovered while doing some research 35 years ago.

In 2016, he started tweeting Kelson's diary entries from 1816.

Budden said while most of Kelson's entries are fairly dry, over time they provide a lot of insight into what life in Newfoundland was like back then.

Isolated and cosmopolitan at the same time

"You've got small communities in Newfoundland with ships regularly arriving from various European ports, other Canadian ports, St. John's," he told CBC Radio's Central Morning.

"If you view it on any particular day you might not get much out of it, but if you look at it over a period of time you get a real sense of the patterns of the seasons, the patterns of trade, and how people lived 200 years ago."

Thursday 22nd May 1817 the Weather Fine with the wind North East arrived the Two Sisters Tucker from the Ice with about 300 Seals bursted —@SladeKelsonTB

Budden said the months of May to October generally contain the liveliest diary entries, with sealing and the anticipation of spring's first arrivals from Europe followed by the busy fishing season and then getting the fish to market in the fall.

William Kelson's grave is located in a private garden in Trinity. (Submitted by Geoff Budden)

With court and other obligations, Budden was a bit erratic keeping up with daily tweets in the first year.

But he has been posting from William Kelson's records regularly since last spring, and said he has plenty of material to keep going.

"The diary goes to 1851, at which point I'll be 89, so I don't know what will give out first, me or the diary."