Park Slope · Carroll Gardens · Cobble Hill · Gowanus · Red Hook · Columbia Waterfront
Places to cool off during hot weather: cooling centers (libraries, older adult and community centers), outdoor pools, spray showers, and waterfront. Many centers open only when the City declares a heat emergency. Confirm at NYC Cool Options or call 311.
This page is a running weather resource for Community Board 6: whatever the season is throwing at us, from heat waves to heavy storms and flooding. Right now it includes:
As the seasons change, so will what's here. In summer that means heat and cooling; when storms, flooding, or cold weather move in, this is where CB6 will point you for maps and guidance.
When a weather alert is in effect, follow the official guidance linked in the banner above, sign up for alerts at nyc.gov/notifynyc, and call 311 for help. For heat safety specifically, see nyc.gov/beattheheat.
As always, this project is focused on Brooklyn Community Board 6, but everyone is welcome to use it, explore the maps, and ask questions, no matter where you are.
Places to cool off during hot weather: cooling centers (libraries, older adult and community centers), outdoor pools, spray showers, and waterfront. Many centers open only when the City declares a heat emergency. Confirm at NYC Cool Options or call 311.
Sites: NYC Facilities Database, NYC Parks Pools & Spray Showers (Open Data). Live activation: NYC Cool Options. Pool season June 27–Sept 13, daily 11am–7pm (closed 3–4pm for cleaning). Status is best-effort and may differ from live conditions.
This map shows how much hotter or cooler each part of the district runs compared to the citywide average, using USGS Landsat 8 satellite imagery. Tap the map to pan or zoom; otherwise scroll right past it.
With the Mayor announcing a heat emergency this week, I figured this was as good a time as any to take a closer look at something I’ve been curious about for a while. I spent some time digging through the City’s heat data and did my best to break it down into something that’s hopefully useful. I’m approaching this as a layperson, not a climate scientist, so if I’ve missed something or you have additional context, I’d genuinely love to hear from you.
One thing that immediately stood out to me is that about four-fifths of Brooklyn Community Board 6 sits above the citywide average for land surface temperature. The hottest areas are concentrated in the industrial sections of Gowanus and Red Hook, where tree canopy is limited. If you’re curious about a particular block, just click or tap anywhere on the map to see its reading.
The three coolest places within Community Board 6 are all in Red Hook.
The thing I found most interesting is that Community Board 6’s two biggest cooling assets aren’t actually inside the district.
To me, that’s really what this map shows. Heat isn’t distributed evenly, and neither is access to cooler places. A few blocks can make a meaningful difference.
The data comes from USGS Landsat 8 satellite imagery collected during the summer months, with cloud cover removed and multiple years averaged together. The New York City Council Data Team processed the imagery into differences from the citywide average and smoothed the results over roughly one and a half long city blocks. I’ve clipped that dataset here to the Brooklyn Community Board 6 boundary.
One final note: this map shows land surface temperature, not the air temperature in your weather app. Asphalt, rooftops, and other hard surfaces can become much hotter than the surrounding air, so think of this as a map of where heat is absorbed and stored.
As I mentioned above, the closest thing I have to a science background is political science. I put this together because I found it interesting and thought others might too. If you spot something I missed or have additional insight, please let me know.
Mike Racioppo
The city's Heat Vulnerability Index (HVI) rates every neighborhood from 1 to 5 for how likely residents are to get sick or die during a heat wave. It is built from things that make heat more dangerous: how hot the streets get, how little tree cover and green space there is, how many homes lack air conditioning, and how many residents are low-income or are groups the city has found face higher heat risk. 1 is the lowest risk. 5 is the highest. It describes a whole ZIP area, not a single building.
The map shades every NYC ZIP area by its score. The orange outline is Brooklyn Community Board 6.
Source: NYC DOHMH Heat Vulnerability Index by 2020 ZCTA and Modified ZIP Code Tabulation Areas (Open Data). A lower score is not no risk; extreme heat is the deadliest weather hazard in New York. If it is hot and your home is too warm, use the cooling options above.
Parts of Community Board 6, especially Red Hook, the Columbia Waterfront, and the Gowanus Canal area, face flood risk. Two very different kinds are mapped here, and an address can be exposed to one, both, or neither.
Coastal flooding comes from the harbor: storm surge during hurricanes and nor'easters, plus rising high tides. The shaded area is FEMA's 1% annual chance floodplain, the zone with about a 1 in 100 chance of flooding in any given year (the "100-year flood zone"). Darker blue marks the high-hazard zone, where fast-moving or wave-driven water is expected, so it is the most dangerous. The Today and 2050s buttons show how the mapped zone grows as sea levels rise. If your home is in this zone, flood insurance and an evacuation plan matter, and coastal flooding is what hurricane evacuation orders respond to.
Rainfall (stormwater) flooding is different: it is what happens when a heavy downpour drops water faster than the sewers can carry it away, so it ponds in low spots and streets. This can happen blocks from the water, on a clear-weather cloudburst, with no connection to the tide. This is the kind of flooding that filled basements across the city during Hurricane Ida. The map shades two depths from NYC's Stormwater Flood Map: nuisance flooding (4 inches to about 1 foot, lighter) and deep and contiguous flooding (1 foot or more, darker), plus a future high-tide layer in the later scenarios. The buttons step through a moderate storm today, the 2050s, and an extreme 2080 downpour.
Type an address below to drop a pin and see which zones it falls in. Switch layers with the buttons underneath.
Source: NYC Dept of City Planning / FEMA floodplain and NYC DEP Stormwater Flood Map layers (NYC Open Data). Zones are clipped to CB6 and simplified for display. This is a planning reference, not a substitute for the official NYC Coastal Flood Hazard Mapper, the NYC Stormwater Flood Map, or FEMA determinations. FEMA flood zones are not the same as hurricane evacuation zones; to check whether you would need to evacuate in a storm, use nyc.gov/knowyourzone or call 311.