New York Today: Cloud Show

Top, Michael Nagle/Getty Images; bottom, Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesCloud forecast: bows and flows of angel hair, along with the kind that block the sun.

Updated 10:09 a.m.

Good Thursday morning.

Pack an umbrella if you’re staying out late. But meanwhile:

When you look up at the changing skies today and tomorrow, think of Luke Howard.

Mr. Howard was a pharmacist by trade, but his passion was meteorology.

In 1802, he came up with the modern names for clouds.

Over the next two days, the heavens will display a veritable encyclopedia of cloud forms.

Along with a bit of sunshine this afternoon, and rain beginning tonight and lasting through tomorrow.

Today will start, said David Stark of the National Weather Service, with midlevel clouds â€" altocumulus or altostratus, maybe 10,000 feet above us.

The latter, the National Weather Service’s Online School for Weather says, are “thin enough to regularly reveal the sun as if seen through ground glass.”

As skies clear in the afternoon and the temperature hits 60 degrees, we may see higher clouds: wispy cirrus or cirrostratus, made of ice crystals 20,000 feet up.

Then the heavens thicken and lower.

By midnight, the sky shall be overcast with stratus clouds: “a generally gray cloud layer with a uniform base …sometimes appearing as ragged sheets,” according to the weather service.

All day tomorrow, the clouds will bear down, their bases only a few hundred feet above the ground.

There will be rain, maybe half an inch.

And then, on Saturday morning, the clouds will part.

Sun and blue sky will rule the heavens through the weekend.

And then the show begins again.

Here’s what else you need to know.

COMMUTE

Subways: Check latest status.

Rails: Check L.I.R.R., Metro-North or N.J. Transit status.

Roads: Check traffic map or radio report on the 1s or the 8s.

Alternate-side parking is in effect all week.

COMING UP TODAY

- Mayor de Blasio will name a former banker and close friend, Michael Schlein, to head the city’s Economic Development Corporation.

- Idina Menzel sings at Rockefeller Plaza on the “Today” show. 8 a.m. [Free]

- Black and Latino state lawmakers call for higher wages outside a McDonald’s at Broadway and 51st Street at 12:30 p.m.

- The newly opened 4 World Trade Center will see its first stair-climbing contest, a fund-raiser for cancer research, at 6:30 p.m.

- A sketch of Abraham Lincoln lying in state at City Hall 10 days after his assassination goes on display at the Antiquarian Book Fair, which opens at the Park Avenue Armory. [$20 and up]

- “Moving Murals,” a show of photos of graffiti-covered subway cars, opens at City Lore in the East Village at 6 p.m. [Free]

- The designer Elie Tahari fields questions at F.I.T. 6 p.m. [Free]

- Richard Renaldi’s staged yet spontaneous photos of strangers touching each other go on display at Aperture gallery. 6 p.m. [Free]

- Tentacled genius: “Octopus! A Discussion of Animal Intelligence, Behavior â€" and Robots” at Housing Works bookstore in SoHo. 7 p.m. [Free]

- “Crime After Crime,” an acclaimed documentary about a battered woman who spent 20 years in jail for the death of her abuser, screens at the Brooklyn Museum. 7 p.m. [$12 suggested]

- For more events, see The New York Times Arts & Entertainment guide.

IN THE NEWS

- Every police officer may soon carry a kit containing a drug-overdose antidote. [New York Times]

- Brooklyn Law School is cutting tuition 15 percent as applications to law school decline nationwide. [Wall Street Journal]

- A construction worker died in a fall from the scaffolding at the luxury Dream Hotel in Midtown. [DNAinfo]

- Twenty-one school-bus drivers were accused of cheating on licensing exams. One turned himself in by parking his bus outside the D.A.’s office. [New York Post]

- A subway motorman was disciplined for taking part in the annual display known as the No Pants Subway Ride. [Daily News]

- Seemingly unrelatedly, a 16-year-old girl was arrested on charges of stealing 139 pairs of underwear from the Gap in the Flatiron district. [DNAinfo]

- A Brooklyn-born referee officiated his 2,633rd straight N.B.A. game. [Daily News]

- Scoreboard: Knicks nix Nets, 110-81. Astros down Yankees, 3-1. Mets fall to Nationals, 5-1. Islanders top Senators, 2-1.

AND FINALLY …

From the pantheon of bogus holidays: today is National Tweed Day.

Its origins are obscure, but it coincides with the birthday of William M. “Boss” Tweed, all-powerful and deliciously corrupt political kingpin of 19th-century New York City.

Boss would be 191 today.

While he was often photographed in suits, it could not be immediately determined if he favored tweed the woolen material.

But right now, Bloomingdale’s is offering a Hugo Boss tweed blazer, regularly $595, for just $357.

Sale ends Sunday.

Sandra E. Garcia, Annie Correal and Diantha Parker contributed reporting.

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Getting to Know the Regulars

Dear Diary:

My roommate and I have finally become “regulars” at our corner bodega. When I walk in, I’m greeted with a smile and a familiar “How you doin,’ boss?”

“What’s the etiquette,” my roommate asks one Thursday, “on trying to find out their names, since we sort of ‘know’ them now?”

Saturday morning, I’m in bed with my girlfriend when I hear my roommate come back. The clock blinks “7:03.” I open my door to see one of the guys from the bodega following him. They’re brown-bagging and have apparently been drinking on the corner since 6 a.m. He introduces himself as Omar.

“Who was that?” my girlfriend asks.

“Omar. He works at our bodega.”

We both try to fall back asleep, but the sour smell of marijuana and clanking of beers emanates from the living room. Omar and my roommate have a long, extremely intimate conversation about whom they voted for, their rent, their sexual preference and Omar’s 7-year-old daughter. Once the clock hits 9, I put on a shirt and get ready to go into the office. I say hello to Omar, toothbrush in mouth, and then head uptown with my girlfriend.

Sunday night I’m with my roommate.

“Glad you got to hang out with Omar, especially since you were just talking about asking the bodega guys their names.”

“Yeah.”

We haven’t seen Omar at the bodega since. I often wonder how he and his daughter are doing.

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