The Seattle-New York weather seesaw was scarcely coincidental, Dr. Mass said. “It’s usual to have opposite weather,” he said. “There’s a wavelike pattern to the atmosphere. We are often 180 degrees different.”

So when Seattle turned nice, New Yorkers were almost destined to suffer. And suffer they did.

. . .

Actually, New York City averages more rainfall annually than Seattle, 49.69 inches to 37.07 inches, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, but Seattle’s climate is damper, with more days of rain and mist.

Still, the prime time for murder is clear: summertime. Indeed, it is close to a constant, one hammered home painfully from June to September across the decades. And the breakdown of deadly brutality can get even more specific. September Saturdays around 10 p.m. were the most likely moments for a murder in the city.

The summer spike in killings is just one of several findings unearthed in an analysis by The New York Times of multiyear homicide trends. The information — detailing homicides during the years 2003 to 2008 — was compiled mainly from open-records requests with the New York Police Department, and a searchable database of details on homicides in the city during those years is available online for readers to explore at nytimes.com/nyregion.

. . .

Summer is when people get together. More specifically, casual drinkers and drug users are more likely to go to bars or parties on weekends and evenings, as opposed to a Tuesday morning. These people in the social mix, flooding the city’s streets and neighborhood bars, feed the peak times for murder, experts say.

And the trend occurs in other cities, in places like Chicago, Boston and Newark, according to criminologists.

Some of the same trends are on display around Christmastime and are believed to be behind the slight increases in murder that occur then, criminologists say.

When he canceled school yesterday for the first time in five years, Mayor Bloomberg had to deal with two storms: one from Mother Nature, which dumped eight inches of snow on New York, and another from schoolkids’ moms, furious the last-minute decision forced them to scramble for child care.

. . .

For Bloomberg, it was a snow-win situation. Knowing that so many parents depend on the schools to take care of their kids, the city waited until the last possible moment, 5:39 a.m., to cancel classes for the first time since Jan. 28, 2004.

For that day, Bloomberg made his announcement the night before — and it caused outrage the next day, when the storm turned out not to be as severe as had been forecast and parents groused that they had taken off work for no reason.

This time, the city wanted to make sure that the storm was not overblown, Bloomberg said, adding the thought should have occurred to most parents.

“If you got up this morning, looked outside, and the question didn’t come to you right away, ‘Hmm, I wonder whether or not school is going to be open today,’ and you didn’t know enough to call 311, I would suggest another day in school’s probably a good idea,” the mayor said at a briefing.

“I mean, come on,”[*] he added. “Looking outside, it’s a legitimate question, and you know how to get an answer.”

*Remember, Bloomberg is at his most unbecoming when he reverts to the “Come on . . .” trope.

The streets of New York may look more like the canals of Venice in the coming decades as temperatures — and water levels — rise to dangerous new heights, according to a report released today by a panel of scientists assembled by Mayor Bloomberg.

Similar to a scary sci-fi movie, the scientists said water levels around the city could rise by two feet or more in the coming decades and average temperatures likely go up at least 4 degrees, according to a report by the New York City Panel on Climate Change.

“Planning for climate change today is less expensive than rebuilding an entire network after a catastrophe,” said Bloomberg. “We can’t wait until after our infrastructure has been compromised to begin to plan for the effects of climate change.”

First they heard a ferocious rumble coming down Jewett Avenue; then came the crash of glass and a spray of ice.

The force of a splash from what witnesses believe was an orange Sanitation truck barreling downhill toward Forest Avenue yesterday just before 10 a.m. destroyed the front of the tiny Port Richmond exercise studio.

Tragedy was only averted because the oversized cardboard sign in the window of Get in Gear at 513 Jewett Ave. blocked the half dozen people inside from the flying debris, and the lucky fact that nobody was outside when the giant wall of slush rose onto the sidewalk and slammed into storefronts, neighbors said.

“Glass came in; two of the women screamed,” said owner John Pepe, motioning to show how close he had been standing the window when it shattered.

By the time he ran outside to try and figure out what had happened, Pepe said the truck was already more than a block away: “He was going so fast, he probably did not even know what happened.”

Until last May, Cloyd and Herbeck were living in Sunset Park, in Brooklyn, and they were barely making it. They ate mac ‘n’ cheese for dinner. They couldn’t afford to go out with their friends. They wanted a family, but “there was no room in our Brooklyn equation to have kids unless we put them in a closet,” Herbeck says.

Then one night, Herbeck, who’s 30, found herself browsing online listings in Buffalo. (Why Buffalo? She comes from Buffalo. And like many young Buffalonians, she got out as soon as she could.) “We were like, ‘Okay, the prices are great,’” she says. So they looked at some photos. “And we were like, ‘Okay, they’re really nice apartments. They’re really big. And right by the park.’”

And all of a sudden, they found they were staring at a very different what-could-be life: the one they’d be able to have if they were willing to leave New York.

If you haven’t installed your air conditioner yet, Friday might be the day to do it.

That’s because New York this weekend will be sweltering through a brutal heat wave, the first of 2008.

Daytime highs will soar above 90 degrees from Saturday to Monday, according to Accuweather.com. And the high humidity will make those afternoons feel as though it’s hotter than 100.

Friday will be seasonable, but a warm front later in the day will leave hot and sticky air behind it.

“The heat will dominate much of the area. Saturday, Sunday and Monday highs in the 90s are likely from midtown to central New Jersey,” said meteorologist Alan Reppert of Accuweather.com.

Reppert said it will stay warm and humid until Wednesday or Thursday.

. . .

And if you’re not a fan of the hot weather, you may be in for a long summer.

“Temperatures are expected to be above normal for the rest of the summer, running about two degrees above normal,” Reppert said.

Yes he could go down into the subway and find a warmer stage, but sax player Mike Mycadi says the open air fuels his music. “I actually like the cold better than the summertime,” he says. “It’s more challenging.” Part of that challenge is playing with the thick gloves he wears to keep his fingers agile, and he sometimes practices at home with the gloves. Of course, if the outdoor temperature drops below 32 degrees, the concert must come to an end. “Below freezing and the saliva actually locks up in the keys,” he says. And his playlist? “During the winter I like to play warm songs, like ‘The Heat Is On,’ and ‘Summertime.’ During the summer I switch it around and end up playing things like ‘Let it Snow’ and ‘Frosty the Snowman.’”

See also: Saxophones.

The widespread havoc wreaked by two major hurricanes in Central America and Mexico in the past two weeks may be making headlines worldwide, but the idea of a similar catastrophe befalling the five boroughs seems as remote as ever for millions of New Yorkers.

But not for Queens College Professor Nicholas Coch.

. . .

So, what is in the cards for Queens and the city, if and when a hurricane strikes?

The city’s Office of Emergency Management has spent hours trying to answer that question in hopes of formulating an evacuation plan.

Under their doomsday scenario, a Category 3 storm would likely begin brewing in late August off the west coast of Africa. There, a cluster of high-pressure weather systems converge and arrange into a dark swirling mass that starts to make its way across the Atlantic along a current of warm tropical water. Perhaps the hurricane roars across the Caribbean, much the way one did late last month. Eventually, it begins churning north.

But it is unclear whether the storm will end up hitting New York on its northbound route. The hurricane has already charted a predictable course along the so-called “Atlantic conveyor belt,” but once it goes farther north than Florida and the Carolinas, it begins moving erratically and picks up speed — making it increasingly difficult to predict exactly where it will land.

“When you’re viewing it from Cape Hatteras (in North Carolina),” Coch says, “you can sit back, sip a gin and tonic and watch the storm move slowly over the ocean.” But by the time it appears to be on a path toward New York, “you’ve got about six hours to get out . . . Otherwise, forget it: You’re gone.”

As the Category 3 hurricane churns its way up the coast, the mayor and OEM officials are meeting to discuss how they will handle a mammoth evacuation. City officials estimate that anywhere from 2.5 million to 3.4 million people will need to leave their homes in a short amount of time, if the storm starts barreling toward the city.

. . .

But OEM’s evacuation plan, deemed inadequate in a report conducted by the New York State Assembly last year, will be put to the test. City officials must figure out how to stretch their resources — 881 public shelters for an estimated 1.4 million evacuees who say they would need public shelter during a major hurricane, according to an Army Corps of Engineers study.

That is, of course, if New Yorkers actually decide to leave. The cumbersome two-tier system of evacuation will deter many residents from evacuating, the state report found. Some 40 percent of people will decide not to leave when they learn they must first report to a reception center before they are brought to a shelter.

Others will stay at their homes, because they don’t fully appreciate the threat, Coch worries. “In this situation, one of the most dangerous things in New York are the New Yorkers and their New Yorker mentality,” he said. “They don’t want to be told to evacuate, because so many people think a hurricane could never hit here. Just couldn’t happen.

“Of course, by the time it does hit, it’ll be too late for them.”

For residents seeking a reception center, the mere task of arriving at the designated centers will be a challenge, since many locations are not accessible by public transportation. And as severe thunderstorms buffet the city, the transit system seems closer than ever to failing amid the inclement weather and sudden influx of fleeing riders.

Residents who do make it to the centers will be faced with yet another obstacle: transportation from the center to a shelter.

The city has dedicated roughly 6,000 school buses to the evacuation effort, though it’s unclear who will drive them, and the simple logistics of appointing drivers to evacuation vehicles hasn’t been worked out. Under the city’s evacuation plan, regular school bus drivers have been designated for the task, although no one has notified them of their responsibilities, and no one knows which city employees could fill their drivers’ seats if and when they don’t show up.

And then there’s this: “Potential Tropical Storm Could Strike NYC”. Yeesh!

It took experts until late in the afternoon yesterday to confirm what many in southwestern Brooklyn knew had descended on their neighborhoods as a new workday dawned. It was a tornado — the first to hit Brooklyn since modern record-keeping began — and it turned whole sections of Sunset Park and Bay Ridge upside down.

Roofs were torn off houses. More than 30 families were forced from their homes. Tall trees as thick as men were yanked out by the roots. No one was seriously injured, but cars were turned sideways, awnings and aluminum siding shredded, and countless windows and windshields shattered, in a destructive rain of brick and branch and water that concentrated much of its wrath on 58th Street in Sunset Park.

. . .

The National Weather Service declared the storm a Category 2 tornado on the Enhanced Fujita scale, with winds from 111 to 135 miles an hour. It was the first tornado recorded in Brooklyn since record-keeping began in 1950, said Jeffrey M. Warner, a meteorologist at Pennsylvania State University, and only the sixth recorded in New York City since 1950 and the first since a weak one touched down on Staten Island in 2003.