Long Island weather: Wild week ends with dry, cool Friday

The workweek that started with below zero cold and brought drenching rain and 55 degrees on Thursday is set to end Friday with temperatures right around normal, forecasters say.

That’s before Saturday takes a cooler dip and Sunday sees a slight warm-up, forecasters say.

Friday should be sunny, drier and breezy, said Pat Cavlin, a News 12 Long Island meteorologist. With mostly sunny skies, Friday is expected to be “seasonably cold,” the National Weather Service said, heading up to the mid- to upper 30s, with 38 the normal high at Long Island MacArthur Airport in Ronkonkoma. Gusty winds will make that feel cooler.

For early Friday morning, though, anyone venturing out should take care, as “temperatures are expected to fall below freezing across the area” and “any standing water will freeze,” the weather service said in a special weather statement. As of just before 5 a.m., Stony Brook was at 32 degrees; Shirley and East Hampton, 31 degrees; and Westhampton, 27.

Overnight lows look to be more in the neighborhood of the upper teens for early morning Saturday, which goes on to see highs in the low 30s.

And Sunday, we head up to the low 40s, thanks to southerly winds that “usher in slightly warmer air,” the weather service said.

Conditions are quiet and dry through Tuesday, Cavlin said, when forecasters could be tracking chances of rain and snow for Tuesday night into Wednesday.

As for the storm system that swept through Thursday, it delivered wind gusts as high as 61 mph at Great Gull Island in the eastern Long Island Sound; 55 mph in Farmingdale; and 54 mph at MacArthur Airport, according to unofficial reports gathered by the weather service.

In terms of rainfall, the Syosset area saw 2.40 inches; the Muttontown area, 2.15; Plainview, 2.11; Greenlawn and Orient, 1.88; Melville, 1.77; and MacArthur Airport, 1.11.