Long Island weather: Record high, low for Thanksgiving Day

Extreme cold invaded the region for Thanksgiving Day, and on a day when water bottles froze at a Long Island turkey trot, temperatures broke a 31-year record even before an arctic chill moved in around midnight.

Thursday had seen one busted record — 29 degrees in Islip was the lowest high temperature for the date, said meteorologist Jay Engle at the National Weather Service in Upton. That beat the 31 degrees set in 2008, he said.

 Then at 9 p.m., the low fell to 19 degrees, besting the low set in 1987 for Nov. 22, the service said. Temperatures are expected to dip even further into the night.  

"We're not getting any warmer," Engle said. 

Temperatures all day and night felt colder because of the wind chill.

Earlier in the day, Long Islanders traveling west for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade confronted temperatures in the low 20s, but wind gusts of up to 33 mph made Manhattan feel as cold as 8 degrees at 8 a.m. In Oyster Bay, runners bundled up from head to toe at a 5k turkey trot crossed the finish line to find water in some bottles had iced up at an aid station.

"The normal high for Islip is 51 degrees," said Joe Pollina, another meteorologist at the Upton office. "And just to put it into perspective, the normal low is 35 degrees, so today's high temperature won't even reach the normal low."

Nassau and Suffolk police said they had no reports of cold-related problems.

In the Hamptons, the cold snap prompted volunteers for the Turtle Rescue of the Hamptons to search for "cold stunned turtles."

The Jamesport group's founder, Karen Testa, said the warmer temperatures a few days ago may have confused turtles and caused some to leave their winter burrows and baby turtles to hatch early. When temperatures dropped steeply a couple days ago, the cold paralyzed the turtles.

"They're in trouble because now they're out and they can't move to go back in," she said.

Forecasters expect Friday to be sunny, with a high near 32 degrees with light winds. The temps will rise for the rest of the weekend, getting back to a normal low- to mid-50s.

With Stefanie Dazio and Khristopher J. Brooks