Long Island weather: Evening showers before overnight clearing, then sunshine

Light to moderate rain is expected to fall on Long Island Wednesday evening as a low pressure system stalled off the coast begins to exit, the National Weather Service said. 

But, with rain and gusty winds, the system may lead to minor flooding for most of Long Island's southern coast Wednesday evening.

Winds are expected to calm down and the rain should stop overnight. After a cloudy overnight, the weather service said, sunshine will finally return.

The departure of the weather pattern that has brought downpours to so much of the Interstate-95 corridor, from the Mid-Atlantic to southern New England, over the past few days will lead to a two-day warmup. Thursday and Friday will see highs of 72 degrees, the weather service said, along with abundant sunshine.

And then a bit of a chill sets in, with daytime highs capped at the low to mid-60s through Tuesday, and nighttime lows retreating to the 50s and even 40s, the forecasters said, as what it calls a “relatively strong cold front” traverses the region, heading out to sea by Friday night.

“Breezy west-northwest winds will occur Friday night and into the first half of the weekend,” the weather service said.

And, it said, “This allows one of the coolest air masses of the fall thus far to settle over the area for the weekend."

The cloud-erasing high pressure system also could help return temperatures to what the weather service calls "seasonal norms."

October’s mean temperature is 68.2 degrees during the day, according to the weather service’s records, which begin in 1963.

Said the forecasters: "The main question is how much warmer will temperatures get by Tuesday and toward midweek."