How to read the Vibe Weather
Five boroughs, one word each, every day. What the words mean, where they come from, and the three things the reading is not.
At the top of this site, five boxes. One per borough, one word each: Warm, Even, Tense, Grieving, Lifted, and a few others. A trend beside it: rising, falling, stable. Here is exactly how that word gets there.
Where it comes from
Three public streams, counted, every three hours:
- Local news. The day's stories from New York outlets, sorted by borough and scored for tone. A story about a reopened library pushes a borough up; a story about a fire pushes it down.
- 311. The complaints New Yorkers filed with the City in the last 24 hours: how many, about what, where. Noise complaints are counted separately from everything else, because a loud Saturday is not a sad one.
- Public posts, as counts. How many public posts mention each borough and what mood words they carry. We count; we never quote, store or show anyone's post, and we never know who wrote it.
Those three become one number between minus one and one, and the number becomes the word. The whole method is public on the engine, with the thresholds.
How to read the trend
Rising means today's number is clearly above yesterday's; falling, clearly below. A surge is a jump big enough that we flag it on the map. A borough with few stories and few posts on a given day will read Even more often than it should; that is a limit of the data, not a fact about the Bronx.
The three things it is not
- It is not a fact about any person. It is a reading of a place, from counts.
- It is not a prediction, yet. We began the unrevised daily archive on October 1, 2026. When there is enough of it, we will publish, in advance, the test of whether the weather leads anything real (complaints, ridership, nights out), and then the result, whichever way it goes.
- It is not finished. New sources join as they clear our rules: public and free, nothing about individuals.
How to use it anyway
The way you use a forecast. Brooklyn Lifted on a Friday is a good night to go out. Manhattan Tense and falling is a day to be kind on the subway. If you run a shop or a shelter, the daily archive is free to download and plot against your own numbers; if you find it means something, tell us, and if you find it means nothing, tell us louder.