The images of water pouring into subways and banks, cars submerged on Avenue A, escalators that needed to be ridden with scuba equipment, brought to mind an apocalypse of a specific kind, another lost city—Atlantis. Was this what New York could become?

Heat stretches the limits of imagination because imagination is so often visual, and the visuals of heat are often images of absence: people not outside, events not attended, deaths not recorded. We often depict heat by showing the means by which people evade it. Look at the children splashing in the spray of fire hydrants; look at the families... See more