While most people wished for a summer shower to extinguish Wednesday’s heat and humidity, the late afternoon thunderstorms ignited several house and grass fires in parts of the state.

A Hermon home and barn were destroyed after lightning struck the buildings at 7 Phillips Lane, just off Annis Road, around 4 p.m. The barn and the ell, attaching the barn to the home, were burned to the ground, said Lt. Kelli Leighton of the Hermon Fire Department. The back part of the home was destroyed and the front would probably be a total loss, she said.

Six fire departments from neighboring communities and the Maine Air National Guard base in Bangor assisted the Hermon department in fighting the blaze, she said. Despite the heat, no firefighters were injured fighting the blaze, Leighton said, but they had to guard against heat exhaustion.

“It’s so hot that we need a long time to recover,” she said. The firefighters drank a lot of water and took turns battling the fire.

Lightning shot through the window of a Brewer home at around 5:45 p.m., setting a bed on fire in a family playroom, said Lt. Robbie Wildes of the Brewer Fire Department.

The lightning hit the 21/2-story home at 34 Getchell St., and while Veronica Spaight was in the home at the time, with her two daughters, a 6-year-old and 6-month-old, nobody was hurt. Edward Spaight said he was on his way home from work when he noticed the smoke and called his wife.

“I said, ‘It looks like there is a fire in the area,’ and she said, ‘Yeah, it’s our house,'” Spaight, 37, said. “I ran right home.”

Damage to the first floor was considerable, while the second floor had mainly smoke and water damage, Wildes said.

Several other structure and grass fires were reported late Wednesday afternoon in Penobscot County.

Severe thunderstorm warnings and watches for every county in the state except Aroostook alerted residents to the potential for heavy rains, large hail, damaging winds and frequent lightning between the hours of about 5 to 10 p.m. Thursday.

The forecast called for the weather to cool down and dry up by the end of the week, with temperatures to drop in the more comfortable 70-degree range.

But Wednesday afternoon, Mainers in most parts of the state headed for either the nearest body of water, the cellar or an air-conditioned refuge to escape temperatures that soared into the 90s.

Air conditioners around the state worked overtime, as people sweated their way through one of the hottest days of the year – so far.

The exception was in the northernmost part of the state, which was on the other side of a stalled cold front, according to meteorologist Derrick Weitlich of the National Weather Service in Caribou.

It was 70 degrees in Frenchville on Wednesday afternoon, according to the NWS, with a similar temperature reported in St. Francis. It was about 5 degrees warmer in southern Aroostook.

Weitlich said the temperatures peaked at 92 degrees at 2:29 p.m. in the Bangor area. While that was hot, it wasn’t hot enough to break the record 98 degrees registered in 1941, he said.

The normal high for the day historically is 77 degrees, he said.

The heat, combined with the day’s high humidity, prompted the NWS’ Gray office to issue an air stagnation advisory due to elevated ozone and particle pollution levels for most of the state.

The Maine Department of Environmental Protection recommended that people avoid strenuous outdoor activity, especially the very young and those with pre-existing breathing problems such as asthma and heart disease.

Despite the high temperatures and mugginess, area hospitals and emergency medical personnel did not see an influx of patients with heat-related health problems on Wednesday.

The heat did make for uncomfortable travel and work conditions for some, however.

When Melissa Morris pulled off Interstate 95 in New Limerick early Wednesday afternoon, she immediately stopped at a convenience store.

Not to get gas or to purchase food or beverages for herself, the Boston, Mass., resident explained, but to get directions to the nearest lake.

“I had to take my dog swimming somewhere,” she said, watching her 3-year-old golden retriever, King, happily shake excess water off his fur on the shore of Nickerson Lake. The two are finishing up the final leg of their trip to meet friends in Edmundston, New Brunswick.

“I hope it gets cooler the farther north we go,” Morris said aloud, wiping beads of sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.

Also sweltering in the heat were residents of Calais, where the temperature hovered around 88 degrees at 2 p.m.

According to local dispatchers in Calais and Machias, there were no reports of heat stroke or other heat-related incidents, but there was a problem with a hot dog.

A woman reportedly had left her dog inside her car while shopping at Wal-Mart on South Street in Calais. Local police were called, but when they arrived she had already left the parking lot.

“We have had a lot of people down on the waterfront and a lot of people out on the water in their boats and all those people who are inland should feel free to visit us,” said Eastport City Manager George “Bud” Finch. Rosie’s hot dog stand on the waterfront in Eastport had a long line of people enjoying the weather and munching on hot dogs, Finch added.

In Machias, when asked about the heat, Town Manager Betsy Fitzgerald said that when one of her clerks went outside, she came back and reported that while it wasn’t that hot outside, it was 150 degrees in her car.

Walter “Bub” Ash Jr. said he and his fellow mechanics had a rough day working at East Side Garage in Belfast, where temperatures reportedly topped 92 degrees in the shade.

“It was very hot, and muggy. We drank a lot of water today,” he said.

-Reporters Jen Lynds, Diana Graettinger, and Tom Groening contributed to this story.