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New York Today

New York Today: The Great Indoors

Taking a break from vacation.Credit...Katie Orlinsky for The New York Times

Updated, 7:43 a.m.

Good morning on this rain-soaked Tuesday.

While many New Yorkers are headed back to their routines after a three-day weekend, more than a million of the younger ones — children, that is — are off from school for winter break.

With rain expected today, and cold weather back in the forecast for the rest of the week, parents are on the hook for plenty of indoor events.

Don’t stress; we have plenty of suggestions.

Laurel Graeber covers children’s events for The Times’s Arts section.

“What’s great about being a parent in New York is that there is an embarrassment of riches here,” she said. “Almost every museum has something going on for children. The hardest thing to do is narrow it down.”

Here are her top three events:

Armor Week at Wave Hill in the Bronx, where children can make castles and other items. [Through Sunday, except Friday]

Engineering Week at the New York Hall of Science in Queens, where working engineers lead hands-on activities like building paper bridges, towers and boats. [Through Friday]

And at Kids Week at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in Manhattan, children can meet scientists and participate in workshops on extreme environments like outer space. [Through Saturday]

Other suggestions:

For big kids: “Birmingham 1963,” a story of the struggle for civil rights and based on oral histories. Performed by female members of the theater troupe Downtown Art at 61 East Fourth Street. [Friday and Saturday]

For little kids: “Handa’s Surprise,” a play set in Kenya and accompanied by music and puppetry at the New 42nd Street Studios. [Through Sunday]

For more events, check out The Times’s “For Children” listings, or see the city’s suggestions.

Here’s what else is happening:

WEATHER

Lose your mittens and grab a raincoat.

The single-digit temperatures that got us down last weekend will rise rather drastically today, reaching a high of around 58 degrees in the afternoon.

But that doesn’t mean sunshine and blue skies; prepare to get wet on your morning commute, with the rain shifting from drizzle to downpour during the day.

Rain, rain. Go away.

IN THE NEWS

Police are investigating a claim that the former New York governor Eliot Spitzer choked a woman in the Plaza Hotel. [New York Times]

A new Education Department program aims to keep schools diverse in fast-gentrifying neighborhoods. [New York Times]

A critical deadline passed in a dispute between Success Academy charter schools and the de Blasio administration, leaving the fate of the prekindergarten program in doubt. [New York Times]

Planners of the Brooklyn-to-Queens streetcar look to the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail in New Jersey for inspiration. [New York Times]

Seven Rikers Island officers who were accused of brutally beating an inmate are back on the job with full pay. [Daily News]

One person is dead, and another injured, after a shooting in Brooklyn on Monday night. [Daily News]

Four-legged friends convened on the West Side for the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show’s first day of judging. [New York Times]

Scoreboard: Islanders clip Red Wings, 4-1.

For a global look at what’s happening, see Your Tuesday Briefing.

COMING UP TODAY

Listen to an evening of original jazz at York College in Jamaica, Queens. 6 p.m. [Free]

Hear a discussion on diversity in the publishing industry at the New York Public Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building in Midtown, Manhattan. 6 p.m. [Free]

The author Paul Lisicky discusses his new memoir, “The Narrow Door,” at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in SoHo. 7 p.m. [Free]

Loren Schoenberg, a musician and jazz historian, hosts a listening party of Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue” at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. 7 p.m. [$10 suggested donation]

The Story Collider storytelling series presents five personal histories about when adrenaline kicks in, at Union Hall in Park Slope, Brooklyn. 8 p.m. [$10]

Devils host Flyers, 7 p.m. (MSG+).

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

COMMUTE

• Power is back on at Grand Central Terminal, which went dark yesterday after a power outage. [CBS]

Subway and PATH

Railroads: L.I.R.R., Metro-North, N.J. Transit, Amtrak

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

Alternate-side parking: in effect today, Feb. 16.

Ferries: Staten Island Ferry, New York Waterway, East River Ferry

Airports: La Guardia, J.F.K., Newark

AND FINALLY …

In 1901, a year’s rent on a vault under the ramps leading up to the Brooklyn Bridge cost $5,000 on the Manhattan side, or $500 in Brooklyn.

For many years the city rented them out as wine cellars to offset the cost of the bridge.

But the 18th Amendment put a stop to that.

Until it was tossed aside by the 21st.

In 1934, a few months after Prohibition ended, a wine and liquor distributor secured a Manhattan-side vault and brought in 5,000 cases of alcohol.

“Visitors crowded the taproom,” read an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “musicians played Viennese waltzes, champagne corks popped and nobody remembered that above the trolleys and the elevators, the automobiles and the rushing pedestrians still hurried back and forth.”

New York Today is a weekday roundup that stays live from 6 a.m. till late morning. You can receive it via email.

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What would you like to see here to start your day? Post a comment, email us at nytoday@nytimes.com, or reach us via Twitter using #NYToday.

Follow the New York Today columnists, Alexandra Levine and Jonathan Wolfe, on Twitter.

You can find the latest New York Today at nytoday.com.

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