Temperatures on LI reach high 60s

It looks like Holtsville Hal was right and Malverne Mel might have to eat some crow -- or whatever it is groundhogs eat.

Temperatures on Long Island reached into the mid-to-upper 60-degree range Wednesday, the National Weather Service said, toward the end of the second-warmest winter recorded in the metropolitan area.

And it was Holtsville Hal who predicted an early spring when he didn't see his shadow last month. (Mel, on the other hand, saw his shadow.)

The thermometer hit 69 degrees late Wednesday afternoon at Long Island MacArthur Airport in Ronkonkoma, the weather service said. The record is 72 degrees, set in 1957, according to Brookhaven National Laboratory, where records date to 1949.

Meanwhile, the weather service has released rankings that show the average high temperature in Islip for December, January and February was 46.8 degrees -- second only to the mark of 47.1 degrees set for the same period in 2001-02. Those records date to 1984.

In Central Park, where records date to 1869, the weather service said the high temperature averaged 46.9 degrees -- second only to the average high of 47.9 in 2001-02.

Weather service meteorologist Lauren Nash said the jet stream's path accounted for the difference.

"One of the major features for the entire United States this winter was that the jet stream stayed a little farther north than usual this year," Nash said. "When we had that big snowstorm in October, people were saying we were in for a bad winter -- especially after all the snow last year."

But, it never happened.

The normal average high for Islip is 40.4 degrees, the weather service said. The norm for Central Park is 41 degrees.

The normal average low is 25.6 degrees for Islip, 29.3 degrees for Central Park.

The average low this winter? It was 29.8 degrees in Islip, and 34.1 degrees in Central Park.

Both rank in the three warmest average low temperatures on record for a winter.

Long Island tied the warmest average high temperature ever for December in Islip (49.4 degrees), as well as tying the mark for the least-snowiest December (zero inches) -- and tied the mark for the warmest February, too, at 46.4 degrees.

The Island has had the third-lowest total winter snowfall of all time, just 4.4 inches. Not quite the 1 inch in 1997-98 or even the 4.2 inches in the winter of 1989-90.

Temperatures will cool a little as the week wears on, the weather service said. Highs in the upper 40s, low 50s are forecast for Thursday, with a chance of showers and cooling temperatures on Friday.

But for the weekend, temperatures are expected to return to the 60s. The official start of spring is Tuesday. Nash, the meteorologist, said Wednesday that the weather service climate prediction center is forecasting above-average temperatures for the three-month period including March, April and May.