More rain, lingering outages Wednesday

In one of the wettest summers already on the books, rain continued to fall on the Long Island metro area Wednesday as LIPA grappled with more power outages.

And don't expect clear, sunny skies any time soon. The National Weather Service said there's a chance of rain in the forecast Thursday, Friday and Saturday before skies begin to clear Sunday. Daytime temperatures will hover in the low 70s, dropping into the mid-60s overnight.

A high surf advisory is in effect for ocean beaches until 9 p.m. and a small craft warning was issued for the Long Island Sound and South Shore waters, the weather service said.

LIPA officials said the outages, which ranged from about 1,500 to about 8,000 on Wednesday morning and early afternoon, were because of the bad weather.

The latest round of rainstorms dropped 2.05 inches on Centereach as of 8 p.m. Tuesday, the weather service said, while Plainview and Mount Sinai got 1.60 inches, Orient 1.56, Greenport 1.54, Riverhead 1.50 and Wantagh 1.48.

The weather service said 2011 marked the fourth wettest summer recorded at Islip, where records date to 1984. The June, July and August rainfall total was 17.02 inches.

The wettest summer was 1990 with 22.31 inches, followed by 1989 with 20.44 and 1992 with 17.71, according to weather service figures.

Brookhaven National Lab recorded 16.44 inches of rain this summer, with 4.33 inches in June, 2.30 in July and 9.81 in August, officials said. The most rainfall recorded on Long Island was at the lab, which recorded 22.25 inches in 1989. Those records date to 1949.

In Central Park, the weather service said 3.03 inches fell. During the climatological summer -- June, July, August -- 25.23 inches of rain fell in the park, which helped to make it the wettest on record in the park, where records date to 1869.

The previous mark for Central Park was 22.40 inches. That was set in 1975.

The normal average for the summer is 13.45 inches.

LaGuardia Airport got 24.11 inches and Kennedy Airport got 22.04 during the same three-month period.

The weather service also reported that July brought several days of record heat, with 104 degrees recorded in Central Park on July 22 and 100 on July 23.

That made July the second-warmest July on record, though the summer of 2011 didn't crack the all-time Top 10 because August temperatures were barely above average, the weather service said.