Crisp and windy fall weather forecast all week for Long Island

Expect a week of fall weather in full swing, with temperatures in the 50s and 60s and, strong, gusting winds.

The National Weather Service said that while the high Monday on Long Island hit about 65 degrees under sunny skies, daytime temperatures will fall into the mid-to-upper 50s on Tuesday and they'll remain there until Friday. Overnight temperatures in the 40s are expected most of the week.

Long Islanders can also expect breezy weather, with wind gusts that could knock down tree limbs.

More sunny skies and highs in the upper 50s are forecast Tuesday. Winds of 10 to 16 mph and gusts as high as 20 mph are also expected. On Wednesday, gusts could hit 24 mph.

A slight warmup Friday will see more clear skies with in the mid-60s. Saturday and Sunday will bring more sunny skies with highs near 70, forecasters said.

Weather service meteorologist James Tomasini said an expected high pressure system moving into the area should keep conditions dry for the rest of the week. That's good news — and bad. Good, because it means Long Islanders are in for nice weather.

Bad, because rainfall has been abnormally low for the area for the past month, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. As of last Thursday, portions of the metropolitan area, including eastern Suffolk County, have been "abnormally dry" — the lowest of five drought-level indicators, the drought monitoring service said.

In fact, according to the National Weather Service, September was the driest ever on record for Islip, whose records date to 1963, with just .24 inches of rain recorded, Tomasini said.

The norm for the month is about 3.6 inches of rain. The previous low was .61 inches in 2019.

However, the weather service said the drought indicators are nothing to be alarmed about, since rainfall for the summer season was almost exactly normal — 11.49 inches compared to the average of 11.5 inches — and since, Tomasini said, Long Island actually had a wetter August than usual with a rainfall total 2 1/4 inches above normal for the month.

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.”