Long Island weather: Sunny until weekend brush with Ian

The sunny skies of Wednesday will prevail until Saturday morning, when Hurricane Ian's remnants will begin to bring some weekend moisture to the region, the National Weather Service said.

Hurricane Ian, now ranked a Category 4 and threatening much of Florida with catastrophic floods and even tornadoes, should largely spare New York. But local forecasters are keeping a close eye on it, starting this weekend.

"High pressure weakens across the region Saturday and shifts farther away, allowing for a warm front to approach from the south. This front will be part of a complex low pressure system that will also have leftover tropical moisture from Ian as well as the low center of Ian itself with its extratropical transition," the weather service said.

"The consensus of numerical weather prediction model guidance has a slow northward approach of this warm front but staying south of Long Island for the weekend. Then the consensus of model guidance shifts the front farther east for early next week with a weakened low potentially passing by south of Long Island. The entire system shifts farther east with this low toward the middle of next week."

Ian is expected to strike Florida’s west coast Wednesday and linger over that state before heading back to sea by Thursday, then possibly make landfall again by the Georgia/South Carolina border as a tropical storm late Thursday and into Friday.

For the rest of the week locally, it will be sunny and dry, with highs in the upper 60s and 70s and lows in the 50s.

Saturday afternoon and night presents the next chance of rain, assessed at about a 40% chance with similar chances through until Tuesday, the weather service said, as Ian passes to the south along with a second weaker low pressure system.