Boston ? Summerlike heat baked the eastern third of the country again Wednesday, toppling more records and sending people outside in search of sun and relief.

It felt like July, not mid-April. Boston hit a record 92 degrees, and Springfield sweltered at 95. Concord, N.H., posted a record 91 and Portland, Maine, a record 80. Albany, N.Y., posted 91, the earliest recorded 90-degree temperature there. New York and Newark, N.J., both had a record of 96, and Philadelphia hit 95. It was 94 in the nation’s capital.

The unseasonable warmth stretched from the Midwest to southern Maine, where the Portland beaches played host to people in swimsuits before the mercury dropped into the 50s.

Along the upper Great Lakes, snow melting rapidly under the hot sun caused flooding in northern sections of Wisconsin and Michigan.

Brian McFarland sat with his sleeves rolled up and sweat on his brow as he waited with his wife and two children for friends to pick them up for a cruise of Boston Harbor.

“This is a major bonus. We were skiing last week,” said McFarland, 37, of Kingfield in northern Maine. “Too hot,” puffed 8-year-old son Dylan.

The late afternoon sun was so hot in Manhattan that Theresa Hudec said her 10-minute wait for a bus home felt like an hour. “It came too hot, too soon,” she said. “If it’s like this now, what’s going to happen in July and August?”

Cooler weather was advancing across the northern Plains and was expected to reach the Northeast during the weekend.