Long Island weather: Clear and windy, with highs in the 50s

After a 20% chance of showers between 8 and 10 a.m., skies were expected to clear for Tuesday's Election Day, with the wind once again a dominating force as gusts could top 30 mph, forecasters said.

The daytime high will be a balmy 52 degrees.

The forecast for the rest of the nation is almost entirely for fair weather with one exception, New England, where anyone waiting outside in lines at polling stations may need an umbrella.

And Long Islanders can anticipate unusually warm temperatures — high 60s and even 70 degrees are possibilities — under mainly sunny skies for the rest of the week.

Gusty winds on LI

While the winds now howling over Long Island should subside by this evening, Suffolk clocked the fastest wind speeds in the metropolitan area in the past 14 hours, with Stony Brook recording the top speed of 64 mph, according to initial observations, the National Weather Service’s Islip office said.

Stony Brook’s report bested the maximum speeds seen in Westchester and Fairfield counties by 10 mph or so.

Also in Suffolk, Eatons Neck clocked wind gusts of 62 mph while Republic Airport in East Farmingdale reported 56 mph, the weather service said.

The minimum sustained speed for a hurricane is just a dozen miles faster.

In Nassau, Merrick’s wind gusts of 45 mph were the swiftest.

PSEG Long Island only listed a handful of outages on its website despite the potential for the strong winds to blow down power lines.

Cold snap, then a warm-up

Thermometers could fall into freezing territory Tuesday night as a cold front arrives, and the Island may wake up to patches of frost on Wednesday, the weather service advised.

On Wednesday look for sunny skies with a high of 60 degrees. Thursday is expected to be the same but the high will reach 64 degrees.

Friday should also offer sunshine with a high near 66 degrees and Saturday will be a twin weather-wise, the weather service said. On Sunday, the sun may raise the temperature to 68 degrees and on Monday a high of 65 is forecast.

The temperature for November on Long Island usually is cooler, ranging from 37.1 to 53.2 degrees, the weather service says.

October, meanwhile, was warmer than usual, averaging 56.8 degrees — 2½ degrees above normal, weather service spokeswoman Faye Morrone said by telephone.

That does not even vault it into the top 10 warmest Octobers. The record was set in 2017, when the average temperature was 61.9 degrees, she said.