Weather service confirms: Long Island temps topped 100 Tuesday; relief in sight

Readers asked: Did it — or, didn’t it? 

The morning after it was reported Long Island hit 100 degrees on Tuesday, turns out it didn’t.

It hit 101: That, according to official data available Wednesday from the National Weather Service.

“No question,” weather service meteorologist Dominic Ramunni said Wednesday when asked about the triple-digit temperature readings. “Many of our sites hit a hundred — and, we have it at 101 degrees at Islip. It was the hottest June day on record.”

The previous record high for June was 96 degrees.

The triple-digit weather also marked the first time since 2011 — and, just the eighth time ever — that 100-degree temperatures were recorded on Long Island.

It was the hottest day on the Island since it hit 101 on July 6, 2010.

So, what’s all this confusion over the actual temperature readings?

The weather service said while many of the hourly updates first reported showed lower sub-100-degree temperatures on the hour, intra-hour reports showed the high-temperature marks -- a number of recording stations hitting 100 degrees intra-hour, with some even surpassing it.

In Shirley, it hit 100 degrees at 2:56 p.m. At Gabreski Airport in Westhampton, it was 100 degrees at 2:22 p.m.

The weather service certifies data overnight, after assessing all gathered information. The information recorded at Long Island MacArthur Airport is considered the official data for the Island, though records kept there date to just 1963.

Bottom line?

"We officially hit 101," Ramunni said. "That's a fact, one-hundred percent."

So, what led to all this oppressive heat that’s smothered the Long Island-metro area in recent days — and, when will it end?

“It’s hard to get this hot this early in the season,” Ramunni said. “If it was July, it might be expected. But not June.”

That Long Island saw record-breaking temperatures was because of a combination of factors that Ramunni said included “an impressive ridge of high-pressure” centered over the Island, coupled with winds that kept it there — limiting the marine influence that would tend to cool all that hot air.

“You had a couple of different things come together,” he said. “The result was triple-digit temperatures.”

Relief is expected soon, as a new weather front pushes into the area late Wednesday and overnight into Thursday, bringing cooler air and maybe rain.

And so while the weather service is expecting a high of 96 Wednesday, the predicted high for Thursday is just 76 degrees — with temperatures in the 60s predicted for Friday.

By John Valenti

john.valenti@newsday.com

John Valenti, a reporter at Newsday since 1981, has been honored nationally by the Associated Press and Society of the Silurians for investigative, enterprise and breaking news reporting, as well as column writing, and is the author of “Swee'pea,” a book about former New York playground basketball star Lloyd Daniels. Valenti is featured in the Emmy Award-winning ESPN 30-for-30 film “Big Shot.”