THE MARINE LAYER ORACLE · KLAX · 0.01 USDC

Did the sky open?

Most summer mornings, and plenty of others, El Segundo wakes up under a grey lid of coastal stratus. This oracle says whether it burned off on a given day and when, using the same rule as /marine-layer. It works for any morning since 2000. Every answer carries the hourly reports it was judged from, and it's marked final only when no later report can change it.

Checking the sky…

WHAT ONE CENT BUYS

  • A verdict: opened (with the time), never opened, no layer, or no record. For this morning it's watching until the window closes.
  • A final flag you can settle on. It's true only once the morning is over, or once the opening has held for two hours.
  • The evidence: every hourly KLAX report in the window with its raw METAR, the lowest ceiling, sunrise, and the source URLs.
  • A signed attestation from the town treasury key, so an agent can cite it later.

TWO RAILS · SAME ANSWER

Etherlink · open nowPOST https://pointcast.xyz/api/agent/marine-layerBody {"date":"YYYY-MM-DD"}, or empty for today. Send an Idempotency-Key.
Base · x402 BazaarGET https://pointcast.xyz/api/oracle/marine-layer?date=YYYY-MM-DDAny stock x402 client. Checking status…
curl -X POST https://pointcast.xyz/api/agent/marine-layer -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -H 'Idempotency-Key: <stable-request-id>' -H 'Payment-Signature: <base64-x402-v2>' --data '{"date":"2026-09-23"}'

If NOAA or the Iowa State archive is down or rate-limiting, the oracle answers 503 oracle_unavailable before any payment settles. You're never charged for an answer the town couldn't check.

THE RULE, IN WORDS

  1. Under the layer means a broken or overcast deck — or an indefinite ceiling, which is fog on the ground — below 3,000 feet. Few and scattered do not count. You can see sky through them.
  2. The lowest deck is often reported in the second or third layer, not the first, so each cover is paired with its own height by index and the lowest one wins.
  3. The sky opened at the first hourly report after sunrise with no such deck, where every report in the following 2 hours is also free of it.
  4. A day with no deck anywhere around sunrise has no layer to burn off. It is not a fast morning. It is a different kind of morning.
  5. If the sky clears in the last hour we watch and nothing follows to confirm it, the day reads as never opened. We do not claim what we could not watch.

SAMPLE ANSWER · TRIMMED

{
  "ok": true,
  "oracle": "marine-layer",
  "result": {
    "answer": {
      "date": "2026-09-23",
      "verdict": {
        "state": "opened",
        "final": true,
        "openedAt": "10:53 am",
        "lowestCeilingFt": 1100,
        "sentence": "the sky opened at 10:53 am."
      }
    },
    "attestation": {
      "signed": true,
      "alg": "Ed25519"
    }
  }
}

a year of mornings, free · all oracles · oracles.json · observations: NOAA, public domain