New York City, February 24, 2016

★ A windblown stinging rain made a persuasive case for telecommuting. Fog ate the scenery. The ceiling of clouds or mist was blankly even-looking, its irregularities only visible by which buildings it lopped off and which it left alone. “I took a gigantic step over a gigantic puddle,” the four-year-old announced. It was always raining less or more than it had just been raining. A teen in a pink hoodie pivoted her sneakers this way and that on a wet metal grate, making them squeak. On the way to dinner, it was much warmer than it had been at school pickup three hours before. By bedtime it was warmer still. Lightning flashed in the west and the building moaned, but the brunt of the storms would go somewhere else.