Notes: where do local back ups go?

For a reason unknown my apple notes on my macbook was not syncing with the cloud.

When it reconnected to the cloud to sync, the cloud version (from my iPhone) overwrote the unsynced version on my macbook.

I can't believe that what was on my macbook up until the resyncing moment simply disappeared forever.

Or did it?

Does anyone know where I could start to look for it?