With afternoon temperatures in the 70s, Tim Campbell blows leaves Thursday off the wall in front of the Maine State House in Augusta. Workers from the state’s Bureau of General Services are utilizing the warmest Halloween on record to clean up fallen leaves at the Capitol Complex. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

AUGUSTA — Halloween was so hot in central Maine that it was spooky.

A 68-year-old record for the warmest Oct. 31 recorded in central Maine was buried Thursday when temperatures reached 75 degrees in Augusta and Waterville.

Thursday’s high temperature easily broke the area’s record for Halloween, set at 69 degrees in 1956 — one of the region’s longest-standing high-temperature records for October.

Thursday morning’s low temperature was just 3 degrees short of the record low, set at 54 degrees in 2019.

The National Weather Service only has complete records for Augusta, but the record was almost certainly broken Thursday in other parts of central Maine, including Waterville and Skowhegan, where high temperatures also reached about 75 degrees in the afternoon.

Stephen Baron, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Gray, said Thursday’s record temperatures were due largely to a high-pressure system over the region. The area of high pressure helped warm the atmosphere and push warmer temperatures toward land, Baron said.

Plus, he said, the position of the high-pressure system pulled in warm, moist air from the southwest overnight and into the day Thursday.

The time of the year — with many leaves on the ground instead of on trees — can play a part in increased warming, too, according to Baron.

With afternoon temperatures in the 70s on Thursday, workers from the state’s Bureau of General Services utilize the warmest Halloween on record to clean up fallen leaves around the Maine State House in Augusta. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

“The leaves doing their thing — photosynthesis — actually helps to curb temperatures a little bit,” Baron said. “So, when we do get these warm spells in late or early spring, they do get quite warm. You can get 80-degree days in April because of that. That is something, meteorologically, that we notice.”

Baron said it is possible high-temperature records could also be in jeopardy Friday. The record high temperature for Nov. 1 in Augusta is 72 degrees, which is also the high temperature that the National Weather Service has forecasted for Friday.

Temperatures in central Maine are expected to cool drastically Friday evening as a cold front brings showers to the region. And on Saturday, the forecast calls for highs near 50.