Summery heat breaks records Bangor reaches 90-degree mark for 71-year high

ORONO – Spotty, a 2-year-old border collie, splashed into the calm water of Pushaw Lake Wednesday afternoon, happily swimming at Gould’s Landing to retrieve a stick for his owner, Heather Haslam, and her 6-year-old daughter of Glenburn. The enthusiastic canine swam for about half an hour and appeared to be the coolest mammal around on a very warm day that broke weather records all over the state.

The sun peeked in and out of clouds all day, yet managed to appear often enough to heat things up locally. Dust blew in the air from dry ground stirred by a gentle breeze.

In Bangor, the temperature reached 90 degrees Fahrenheit by 4:30 p.m., breaking a 71-year-old weather record of 80 degrees set in 1930, according to the National Weather Service in Caribou. Portland registered 90 degrees at 2 p.m. breaking a 25-year-old weather record there.

“You could fry an egg out here,” griped a truck driver who stirred up a cloud of dust as he dumped his umpteenth load of fill at a construction site along Bangor’s riverfront.

Temperatures reached 88 degrees in Augusta and Waterville and 85 degrees in Fryeburg by midafternoon Wednesday. Aroostook County and coastal areas from Calais to Rockland registered temperatures in the high 70s to mid-80s, while Wiscasset registered a temperature of 88.

Far from a heat wave – defined as three days of temperatures registering 90 degrees or over – Wednesday’s warmth caught some Maine workers off guard.

“I hate it,” moaned a red-faced, sweating fry cook at a McDonald’s restaurant in Bangor. The air conditioning had yet to be turned on at noon inside the facility.

The warm air swept over the Pine Tree State in advance of a storm front that combined air from the South and from the Midwest, according to NWS meteorologist Kirk Apffel in Caribou. While Maine baked a bit in summerlike weather, the Midwest, on the other side of the front, cooled off Wednesday with temperatures in the mid-60s. Temperatures could be higher Thursday before cooler weather enters the state by Friday, according to the NWS.

Of key concern are dry conditions that have prompted a ban on burning permits in greater Bangor. The Maine Forest Service on Wednesday placed large areas of central-northern Maine in a Class 4 category, or very high, for fire danger.

Open areas of pasture or field away from forests are especially susceptible to fire, according to Victor Nouhan, leaf forecaster and fire weather focal point forecaster for the NWS.

With the temperature cracking 90 degrees for the first time this year, a state panel announced Tuesday that Maine’s flood risk is nearly back to normal for this time of the year.

The announcement came weeks after the River Flow Advisory Commission warned that the snowpack was so deep that the right combination of rainfall and high temperatures could have caused severe flooding.

But a combination of dry weather, cool nights and mild daytime temperatures spared the state serious flooding.

“We really did dodge the bullet. We were lucky,” said Tom Hawley of the NWS in Gray.

A big factor in the turnaround was dry weather in April. Hawley said April’s rainfall came in at less than an inch in most parts of Maine, and Bangor had its second-driest April on record.

“We needed better-than-perfect conditions to avoid major flooding this spring, and we got that,” Art Cleaves, director of the Maine Emergency Management Agency in Augusta, said in a statement.

Warm weather this week was expected to melt the remaining snow in northwestern and northern Maine.

The fire hazard was expected to remain high for the next week to 10 days, said Jim Downie of the Maine Forest Service.

About 165 fires have burned 320 acres since April 8. Although there wasn’t much runoff from the snowmelt this year, the vegetation was dry because there was so little rain this spring, he said.

“You bat your eyes one morning and you’re in the spring fire season,” he said. “It just jumped at people this year.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.