People walk along Portland’s Eastern Promenade Trail on Labor Day Weekend on Sunday. Carl D. Walsh/Staff Photographer

Natives and tourists welcomed a sunny Labor Day weekend as Portland closed out one of its warmest summers yet.

The city had its second-warmest summer on record this season with an average of 69.2 degrees Fahrenheit throughout June, July and August, according to the National Weather Service. That’s 2.5 degrees above Portland’s normal summer temperature.

It narrowly topped 2022, Portland’s third-warmest summer, which averaged 69.1 degrees. The hottest summer on record in Portland was 2020, when the average temperature for June, July and August was 70.5 degrees, said Derek Schroeter, an NWS meteorologist based in Gray.

Statewide, Maine experienced the warmest June and July on record with an average temperature of 66.8 degrees, 4.2 degrees above normal, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information. NCEI has not yet published the final temperature average for August, so cooler conditions later in the summer may keep this summer from ranking the hottest statewide, Schroeter said.

Summer 2020 was the third-warmest summer statewide, 2021 was the fourth-warmest and 2022 was the 10th. Recent hot summers have been driven by warmer nighttime temperatures, Schroeter said.

Four out of the last five summers in Portland are among the city’s warmest on record, Schroeter said, with the exception of 2023, which was wetter, cloudier and cooler than this year.

On the Sunday before Labor Day, temperatures reached the low 80s in Portland, far milder than the 90-degree heat wave days of July. But it was still hot enough for plenty of families to hit the water.

“I think on these really hot days, being on the ocean is one of the best places to be,” said Zack Anchors, owner of Portland Paddle, a company that rents paddle boards and kayaks out of East End Beach.

A hot season paired with less rainfall meant lots of traffic for local businesses that rely on outdoor conditions.

Norman Patry, center, owner of The Portland EnCYCLEpedia, bike rentals and tour company, settles up with customers, the Pawlukowsky family of Chicago, at the business Commercial Street shop on Sunday. Carl D. Walsh/Staff Photographer

Norman Patry, owner of Portland EnCYCLEpedia bike rental and tour company Summer Feet Cycling & Walking, said his businesses have definitely seen more people this summer than last.

“We can’t function when it’s raining, we can function when it’s hot,” Patry said. “There certainly were days this year where it was too hot to rent bikes, so we didn’t do a lot of rentals.”

Patry said he had to cancel tours last year because of rain, but this year was a different, drier story.

Summer 2023 saw the second-wettest summer statewide, while numbers from June and July 2024 have this summer on track to be the 24th-wettest depending on August precipitation averages, according to NCEI. There was 17.23 inches of precipitation in Portland last summer, making it the fifth-wettest for the city.

Summers in Maine are just getting warmer, which means a greater threat of health risks for those out in the summer weather.

Patry said his team has adapted their routines to keep bikers safe in increasingly warmer summers.

“We’ve, over the last three to five years, spent more time talking to people about heat management, if we need to change the tour, making sure people stay hydrated, recognize signals of some heat-related illnesses because it’s just going to get worse,” Patry said.

Also planning for the warmer summers of the future is Anchors, who said that high winds caused by hot weather may force the company to cancel tours more often.

Docked at Portland’s Ocean Gateway for the day, passengers of the ocean liner Liberty at Sea, take photos with the vessel behind on Labor Day Weekend on Sunday. Carl D. Walsh/Staff Photographer

“This year was completely manageable for us in terms of heat, but I think that, in five or ten years, when things heat up, there’s going to be more concerns because of the heat,” Anchors said.

People with preexisting conditions are at risk when heat waves hit. That’s especially true in Maine, which has the nation’s oldest population on average. During a heat wave in mid-July this year, 86 Mainers went to the emergency room over one week for heat-related illnesses, according to state data.

High temperatures earlier in the summer prompted some Maine communities unaccustomed to heat to face a new reality; rural towns strategized extreme heat plans and areas as far north as Caribou opened cooling centers.

If the climate continues to change along this trend, Portland’s average summer high will likely climb about 8.9 degrees by 2100, according to July data from Climate Central.