From left, Lily Smith, 8, and Haley Blanchard, 8, Anna Blanchard, 10, and Aurora Smith, 10, swing at the playground at Crescent Beach in Cape Elizabeth on Tuesday, when Portland hit a record 92 degrees. The girls, who are all from Gray, got out of school early and came to Cape Elizabeth for their first beach day of the season. (Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer)

Tuesday’s high of 92 degrees made it the hottest May 19 on record in Portland by a wide margin, and came close to being the hottest May day in the city overall since the National Weather Service began keeping such records in the 1870s.

Some other areas, including Fryeburg, also broke records for May 19, though the weather service’s daily temperature data there and in some other areas of Maine only date back a few decades.

Meanwhile, Bangor tied a local record for the date, and the Augusta and Lewiston areas are among those that also came close to breaking records on Tuesday.

This week’s weather is largely being driven by a ridge — a long stretch of high atmospheric pressure — forming over Maine, according to the weather service. In this case, the ridge is pushing hot air from the Southwest toward the Northeast.

PORTLAND

The National Weather Service in Gray said it reached 92 degrees in Portland on Tuesday, smashing the former May 19 record of 86 degrees set in 1949.

Tuesday also came within shouting distance of being the hottest May day in the city on record. The all-time May record of 96 degrees, set on May 31, 1937, still stood as of Monday afternoon, according to weather service data. The agency’s records for Portland date to 1874.

The 92 degrees on Tuesday was barely edged out by a pair of 94-degree days on May 31, 1987, and May 27, 1880, and a pair of 93-degree days that came in 2017 and 1921.

Portland has reached a high of 92 degrees multiple times in previous May’s, most recently on May 31, 2013, according to weather service records.

Despite the hot day, it didn’t reach the benchmark for Portland’s cooling center to open on Tuesday. That only happens if the weather service issues a heat advisory or excessive heat warning.

Heat advisories come when the heat index is predicted to exceed 95 degrees for at least two hours or cross 100 degrees for any period of time. Excessive heat warnings are triggered when the heat index is predicted to exceed 105 degrees for at least two hours.

AUGUSTA & LEWISTON

The weather service’s daily max temperature records for other areas in Maine don’t go as far back, but still paint a picture of Tuesday being unusually warm.

Augusta had reached 89 degrees by about 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday, according to the weather service, but it wasn’t enough to set a new May 19 record in the capital — that remains a 91-degree day in 1962.

The hottest May day in Augusta on record came in 1992, when it reached 94 degrees, according to weather service data. The weather service’s maximum temperature data for the city dates to the 1940s.

Meanwhile, it reached 91 degrees in the Lewiston area on Tuesday, according to the weather service.

The agency does not have historic records for the city online, but recent records from Turner, to the north, show a 92-degree May 19 was recorded in 2017 while Gray, to the south, recorded 95 degrees on the same date.

OTHER AREAS

The Sanford area recorded a high of 94 degrees on Tuesday, according to the weather service, but that falls short of the May 19 record of 97 degrees set in 1962.

Fryeburg reached at least 92 degrees on Tuesday, according to the weather service, becoming the hottest May 19 since the weather service began logging daily temperatures there in 1997. A high of 87 degrees on May 19, 2003, was the previous record.

Bangor hit 89 degrees on Tuesday, tieing its record for the date, initially set in 1962, according to the weather service office in Caribou. A forecaster there said no records were broken elsewhere in northern Maine.

Waterville reached 87 degrees on Tuesday, falling short of the May 19 record of a 93-degree high set in 1962. The weather service’s daily temperature records for Waterville date to 1896.

Wiscasset recorded a high of 85 on Tuesday, tying a record for the date set in 2017, though records there only date to 1997.

Tuesday was also one of the hottest May days in some time for many of Maine’s southern neighbors.

Boston reached 97 degrees, the hottest spring day in the city in over a century, the Boston Globe reported. Cities in New Hampshire and Vermont also tied or broke records, with temperatures reaching the mid-90s, the paper reported.

Staff Writer Daniel Kool contributed to this story.