PORTLAND – The calendar may say December, but it felt like springtime Thursday in parts of Maine.

In Portland, pedestrians shed their heavy coats and mittens as the temperature hit 55, breaking the old record of 50 degrees set in 2001, according to the National Weather Service.

In Bangor, the record for the date was 52 set back in 1968. Bangor fell just shy of that record with a high of 49 degrees Thursday, according to meteorologist Tim Duda of the National Weather Service in Caribou.

Those higher-than-normal temperatures will persist into next week, said George Wiseman, meteorologist from the National Weather Service in Gray.