Today the average color is: gray

August 15, 2011 8:55 AM

NSKYC: The average color of the New York sky, updated every 5 minutes. A webcam pointed at the sky, showing the average color. Now in Washington, DC as well. Interview in the Village Voice with creator Mike Bodge. Looking for cameras in more cities.
posted by skynxnex (31 comments total)

I was under the impression that these gray skies were going to clear up. And I was so looking forward to putting on a happy face.
posted by WinnipegDragon at 8:59 AM on August 15, 2011 [2 favorites]

White balance is subjective.
posted by schmod at 8:59 AM on August 15, 2011 [1 favorite]

I was really hoping there would be a block of orange ones. Here in Chicago, if you look toward the Loop at night, the sky is orange from all the lights. (It's much darker looking in the other direction.)
posted by phunniemee at 9:00 AM on August 15, 2011 [1 favorite]

Awesome!
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 9:03 AM on August 15, 2011

Kinda sucks because the blue-sky ones are just the webcam getting confused by the dawn light.
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 9:03 AM on August 15, 2011

Dear anyone checking this thing after around 9PM EST: scroll down.
posted by griphus at 9:06 AM on August 15, 2011

gray...gray...gray... BLUE... gray... gray... gray.

(I want the sun back now.)
posted by functionequalsform at 9:08 AM on August 15, 2011 [1 favorite]

I've noticed the white balancing issues (and the luminosity of the color doesn't really match reality since the camera seems to try to do exposure adjustments). So just see it as average color of that sky as seen through an auto-white balancing webcamera! Still interesting and vaguely accurate to reality.
posted by skynxnex at 9:10 AM on August 15, 2011

Reminds me of A History of the Sky by Ken Murphy, a picture of the sky everyday in SF
posted by bottlebrushtree at 9:11 AM on August 15, 2011 [1 favorite]

That's....actually really cool.
posted by Salvor Hardin at 9:18 AM on August 15, 2011 [1 favorite]

For permanence, make a scarf.

Each day you will knit a stripe in colors that match the sky. It will be lovely to see our different climates create different scarves! I started mine in the beginning of April in Oakland, CA and you can see my progress in the photo at left. This pattern makes a 5-foot scarf over the course of one year.

See also: Romance has lived too long upon this river
posted by zamboni at 9:18 AM on August 15, 2011 [7 favorites]

So just see it as average color of that sky as seen through an auto-white balancing webcamera!
This.
If your cloud-filled sky (as well as the physical surroundings) are ever that blue, you should probably consider heading for the hills.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:21 AM on August 15, 2011

One of the few things I miss about living in LA was that the enormous amount of unadulturated shit in the air -- "boy that sure was a fun 20 minute walk WHEEZE WHEEZE WHEEZE" -- made for the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen. Every day and dusk, it looked like a war in heaven.
posted by griphus at 9:24 AM on August 15, 2011

Livied in the City for some time and I never knew that there was sky . thanks.
posted by Postroad at 9:32 AM on August 15, 2011

I wonder what happened at 9:22 PM last night in the DC camera's field of vision. The moon broke through the cloud cover at just the right moment? There's this weird gray hole in the black box of overnight (which contrasts to New York's variegated shades of overnight gray).
posted by EvaDestruction at 9:36 AM on August 15, 2011

The sky was the color of a video feed, tuned to a dead webcam.
posted by cmyk at 9:39 AM on August 15, 2011 [5 favorites]

Dammit, cmyk! You beat me to the Neuromancer joke!
posted by Mister Moofoo at 9:42 AM on August 15, 2011

NSYNC: The average color is bright white, and has been for over sixteen years.
posted by koeselitz at 9:49 AM on August 15, 2011 [1 favorite]

So roughly the color of television, tuned to a dead station.
posted by pwnguin at 10:54 AM on August 15, 2011 [1 favorite]

Portland, OR skycam: October-April
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:11 AM on August 15, 2011

This would make an awesome desktop background.
posted by maryr at 11:37 AM on August 15, 2011

I hope "every major city" doesn't mean, as it does 99% of the time on the net, "every major US city." Because unlike those drab, humidity-infected shots of the ugly sky in DC, the sky in Calgary is actually sharp, blue and gorgeous.
posted by ethnomethodologist at 11:42 AM on August 15, 2011

Except right this moment when the rain/hell is sharp :)
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 12:09 PM on August 15, 2011

The River That Flows Both Ways: The color of the surface of the Hudson River, from photographs taken once a minute for 11 hours and 40 minutes, translated into stained glass, on the High Line, NYC. One of my favoite pieces of public art in New York.
posted by The Bellman at 12:18 PM on August 15, 2011 [2 favorites]

I hope "every major city" doesn't mean, as it does 99% of the time on the net, "every major US city."

Where does it even say this, that it is offending you? The closest I saw was "I'd love to put a webcam in every major city across the world and kind of plot the colors of the sky across the world on a map. "
posted by smackfu at 12:26 PM on August 15, 2011

I wonder how well this would work as a seed for a psuedorandom number generator.
posted by Soliloquy at 2:25 PM on August 15, 2011

As a lover of skies of all kinds, this is really cool!
posted by nickyskye at 4:30 PM on August 15, 2011

The sky was the color of a video feed, tuned to a dead webcam.

AFAIK, Gibson's never remarked on it, but I've always suspected that first line borrows/alludes to, either consciously or unconsciously, from the opening line of Crane's The Open Boat: "None of them knew the color of the sky."
posted by octobersurprise at 4:57 PM on August 15, 2011

octobersurprise: "
AFAIK, Gibson's never remarked on it, but I've always suspected that first line borrows/alludes to,"

Actually, I'm pretty sure it's a play on the classic "dark and stormy night." Which I suppose The Open Boat could also allude to.
posted by pwnguin at 6:14 PM on August 15, 2011

I did a bunch of work on finding how a people perceived the dominate color of a picture. Average works ok if the picture is fairly uniform. But these pictures aren't, they have buildings with lights, clouds, sun, moon that mess up the color of the sky. They really need to switch their algorithm to find the mode of the picture. My research shows that this is most often the color you 'see' as the dominate color.
posted by Confess, Fletch at 7:02 PM on August 15, 2011

Actually, I'm pretty sure it's a play on the classic "dark and stormy night."

I suppose it's possible that there's an echo of "dark and stormy night" in the first line of Neuromancer, except there's nothing about that opening that suggests darkness or storminess or night time. What makes you so sure? It isn't dark or night at the beginning of The Open Boat, either but it is a bit stormy, so maybe there's a play on "dark and stormy" there, too.

(Now I'm curious if "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen" is an echo of "it was a dark and stormy night." What do you think?)
posted by octobersurprise at 9:15 PM on August 15, 2011