A week after Halloween, as stores stock up for Thanksgiving and Portland prepares for its Nov. 25 Christmas Tree lighting, it looked more like the end of  summer than the middle of fall.

Plenty of people were outside in shorts Sunday, while biking, walking or raking leaves, as unseasonably warm weather continued across Maine.

A day after Portland hit 75 degrees, setting a record for any day in November, Augusta set a new mark for the second straight day with a high of 72. The city’s previous high on Nov. 6 was 66 degrees in 2020, said Jerry Combs, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. Augusta saw a temperature of 76 degrees on Saturday.

Portland’s high on Sunday was 68, 2 degrees shy of breaking its record of 71, also in 2020, Combs said.

“And we could have another day of record high through Monday,” he said. The forecast calls for temperatures to reach the low to mid-70s from Augusta to York.

Portland’s record high for Nov. 7 is 74 degrees from 2020, “so it’s going to be pretty close to breaking the record,” Combs said.

Monday morning looks cloudy, but skies will clear out with the afternoon warming up nicely, he said.

While the warm stretch may be a forbidding sign of climate change to some, the weekend weather did prompt some smiles, not to mention a break from turning on the heat.

The weather has been “fantastic,” said Bob Hannigan of Hannigan’s Island Market on Peaks Island.

Looking out his window, he saw a boatload of day-trippers disembarking from the ferry.

“This is an excessive crowd for November,” he said, noting that his entire staff were all wearing shorts.

Portland Police Officer Rob Lauterbach, who’s assigned to Peaks Island, said there were a lot of people outside enjoying the day as if it were summer, riding bicycles and in golf carts. “It’s beautiful,” Lauterbach said.

But before 6 p.m., when the sun disappears on the first day after turning back the clocks, “it’ll be cold,” he said.

Very soon it’ll be sweater time again. A cold front is expected to arrive Tuesday, bringing more typical November weather, with lows in the 20s and 30s, and highs in the 40s and 50s. Some wind could make it feel even cooler.

But then on Thursday, temperatures are forecast to rebound to the 60s again – “like a roller coaster,” Combs said.

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