Long Island weather: High winds sweep through LI, to weaken Thursday

High winds whipped through Long Island Wednesday night especially along the shore, the National Weather Service reported.

"We’ve some gust up around 40 mph in some places," Jay Engle, meterologist at the National Weather Service in Upton said around 9 p.m. "The winds after midnight start to come down, the strongest gusts have likely already occurred."

Gusts were stronger on the East End gusts as high as 50 mph were recorded at an elevated station on the South Shore, Engle said.

As of 10:30 p.m. Wednesday, PSEG LI was reporting 232 outages.

The weather service issued a wind advisory that began at 2 p.m. Wednesday and extends through 2 a.m. Thursday. During that time drivers should be especially cautious and any items that may be blown away should be secured, it said.

The stiff breezes are arriving ahead of a cold front sliding down from Canada. The high for the day reached the low 70s but come the evening, the weather service said, the winds will keep the temperatures in the 40s and 50s.

"The winds will come back during the day tomorrow [Thursday] but they won’t be as strong, probably gusting closer to 30 mph," Engle said.

After that, the next seven days — including the weekend and Monday’s Columbus Day holiday — should be sunny with daytime highs in the mid-60s, with just one exception: thermometers may reach 73 degrees on Saturday, the weather service said.

Despite the promise of another stretch of fair weather, forecasters did caution that even Long Islanders may not entirely escape the effects of Hurricane Delta, now drenching Western Cuba and the Yucatán Peninsula.

The weather service said one model "still suggests that Hurricane Delta moisture makes it to the region as early as Sunday night into Monday." It added that, "Due to the high uncertainty, pop-ups (showers) were limited to a slight chance."