Eastern U.S. residents faced a second day of early-season heat Wednesday, as record temperatures raised concerns for schoolchildren and residents without reliable cooling. In several places, officials stepped up efforts ranging from school schedule changes to the opening of cooling centers as a cold front was expected to bring rain later this week.
Across the region, the National Weather Service said additional days of record heat were expected from the mid-Atlantic to New England before conditions shifted. The outlook included a sharp drop in temperatures on Thursday, when officials and weather forecasters expected readings to fall to much cooler levels in cities such as Portland, Maine, and Boston, Massachusetts.
In Philadelphia, the school district moved to remote learning for students at 57 schools, citing air-conditioning problems even as it said it had made progress. Lauren Authur, a Philadelphia resident, said the heat came earlier than expected and described how families with young children rely on air conditioning to help keep them from getting sick.
“Today has been like a heatwave,” Authur said, explaining that when children are small, households use air conditioning more frequently to avoid health problems. She also said it “honestly got hot sooner than we expected it to be.”
In New England, the heat pushed temperatures to new highs on Tuesday, including a daily record of 92 degrees Fahrenheit in Portland, Maine, and a daily record of 96 degrees in Boston. With the next day still hot, officials in at least one Boston neighborhood school set up fans, passed around bottled water and allowed students to wear shorts and T-shirts instead of their usual uniforms.
In testimony carried by CBS News, student Ariolainy Baez described the conditions as difficult to manage during the school day, saying the heat outside felt more manageable because of wind, while classrooms felt “just tight and burdening” with quizzes and exams continuing. A heat advisory was in effect through Wednesday evening for portions of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
Maine also saw additional spikes in temperatures, with Portland and the nearby town of Fryeburg both reporting high temperatures for the season after local record-setting the prior day. The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention said early-season heat demands extra caution, warning that people’s bodies are not adapted yet and emphasizing taking breaks in the shade or air conditioning and drinking water.
Elsewhere, people sought relief in ways that ranged from going to beaches that were not yet filled with peak summer crowds to turning front-lawn sprinklers into improvised play areas for children. In New York City, officials opened cooling centers, and Mayor Zohran Mamdani said the city should protect residents in the hottest days, framing the effort as a parallel to how New Yorkers look out for one another during winter cold.
While the heat was expected to persist into Wednesday evening in advisory areas, forecasters said a cold front would eventually bring rain later in the week, along with the much lower temperatures expected to follow on Thursday.