Long Island weather: A second cold, windy night, then a return to more seasonable temps
Commuters wait in the cold and dodge flurries at the LIRR station in Mineola on Tuesday. Credit: Newsday/Howard Schnapp
The arctic air mass that brought snowflakes and wind chills in the 20s will be around a second night before the mercury rises back up to seasonal temperatures Wednesday and the rest of the week.
Wind gusts, which reached 59 miles per hour in Islip Tuesday afternoon, are also expected to gradually decrease overnight Tuesday and into Wednesday to a high of 25 to 30 mph, said John Murray, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Upton.
"The winds and the temperature are going to let up a little bit overnight and into the morning," Murray said. "It's going to moderate a bit ... We are expecting warmer high temperatures tomorrow, closer to 50 degrees for Long Island."
Temperatures were just above freezing Tuesday morning accompanied by strong winds with gusts of up to 41 mph, creating ideal conditions for snowflakes, Weather Service meteorologist Bryan Ramsey said.
As bursts of snow continued into Tuesday afternoon, the service issued a special weather statement for Nassau and Suffolk counties as the winds and flurries may result in reduced visibility.
The service even saw snowflakes at its headquarters at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton.
"There were a few areas where visibility was just briefly reduced for a few minutes," Ramsey said. "Otherwise, the snow has been brief and light."
More seasonal temperatures in the low 50s should return for the remainder of the week, and no precipitation is expected until Friday at the earliest, Murray said.
Thursdays highs will remain in the low-50s before dipping into the upper 30s to near 40 in the evening, he said.
"It's still generally breezy as we head into the latter part of this week," Murray said. "Those winds do appear again but not nearly as much as today."
Newsday's Maureen Mullarkey contributed to this story.
Robert Brodsky is a breaking news reporter who has worked at Newsday since 2011. He is a Queens College and American University alum.
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