CLIMATE: Weather with a Vengeance: Heat, Storm and Flood

In New York City, where the temperature last Thursday surged to 104° ice-cream sellers made up for a lot of their losses suffered during the blackout. Said one good-humored vendor "Now this is an act of God." Less than five months after the worst winter in memory finally relaxed its strangle hold the eastern two-thirds of the nation was racked by a heat storm that harried citizens, strained power, drained water supplies and threatened crops.

So many people crowded the banks of the Charles River in Boston, where the high was 102°, that...