Memorial Day weekend Long Island weather: Highs in low 80s

The long Memorial Day weekend, Long Island’s unofficial launch into summer, is expected to bring continued warm temperatures, dry skies for Friday and Saturday, with a slight chance for thunderstorms Sunday afternoon.

As for Monday, it’s complicated, but we’ll get to that.

High temperatures Friday through Sunday are expected to be in the low 80s, slightly cooler right along the shore.

Following partly sunny skies on Friday, look for mostly sunny on Saturday, making it the preferable day for sky watching at the Bethpage Air Show at Jones Beach State Park, which runs from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on both weekend days.

Conditions Saturday at Jones Beach start off in the morning at about 45 percent cloud cover, clearing to just 35 percent coverage by afternoon, said meteorologist Faye Barthold with the National Weather Service in Upton.

Sunday is looking to be “a touch cloudier,” she said, starting out at around 50 percent coverage, down to around 40 percent in the afternoon, as of Thursday afternoon’s forecast. Sunday afternoon brings a slight chance — 20 percent — for precipitation, rising to 30 percent for overnight hours, the weather service says.

At that point, Long Island could be feeling what would likely be peripheral effects of a low pressure area, now between Bermuda and the Bahamas, which the National Hurricane Center says has an 80 percent chance of developing into a tropical or subtropical storm on Friday or Saturday.

As of Thursday afternoon’s forecast for Long Island, highs in the mid-70s are indicated for Monday, with a 40 percent chance of thunderstorms for daytime and into the overnight hours, the weather service says.

But, much could change in the coming days, Barthold says, with the hurricane center planning to send an Air Force reconnaissance plane Friday afternoon into the disturbance to gather more data.

For now and with a nod to the long weekend, the center is advising those in coastal areas from Georgia to North Carolina to “monitor the progress of this low.”