A cold and rainy Wednesday night is in the Long Island forecast — another near-snow experience in 2023, while upstate and into New England, residents braced for a Thursday winter storm and treacherous conditions.

The latest round of chilly-but-not frigid Long Island weather comes as the region has reached near-record highs this month and is approaching the record low for measurable snowfall set in the winter of 1997-98.

On Thursday, early periods of should end by 10 a.m. with cloudy skies after that, highs in the mid-40s, and an overnight low of 36 degrees, according to the National Weather Service.

“We’ll see that rain the rest of the night, tapering off by [Thursday],” said meteorologist James Tomasini of the National Weather Service in Upton. “It will be completely dry by Thursday afternoon.”

Tomasini said the winter rain is a result of a warm front approaching from the south. 

The highest mean temperature for February was the 47.3 degrees recorded at Long Island MacArthur Airport in 2018, according to meteorologist Bryan Ramsey of the National Weather Service. The mean temperature so far for this February is 48.4, he said Monday.

Less than 1 inch — .7 of an inch, to be exact — has been recorded at MacArthur Airport this winter, far less than the 25 or 30 inches that the region usually experiences. The record for the least snowfall was set during the winter of 1997-98, according to Ramsey, when 2.6 inches of snow fell on Long Island.

Menawhile, widespread heavy snow is forecast Thursday for parts of upstate New York, which could see anywhere from one to six inches, with as much as a foot of snow predicted in some areas over the next three days, the weather service said. And ice, rain, sleet or snow is forecast across much of New England.

For Long Island, high temperatures are expected to stay in the mid-40s through Friday before dipping into the low-to-mid 30s on Saturday, when there’s a 30% chance of light snow, according to the weather service said.

“Then we come back up on Sunday with highs back in the mid to upper 40s and it actually stays like that for the next several days,” Tomasini said.

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