As if to soothe the time change’s grim reminder of approaching dark winter days, the sun warmed Boston Sunday like the last ember of summer.
The temperature at Logan International Airport hit a high of 76 degrees at 2:13 p.m., surpassing the daily record of 73 degrees set most recently in 2015, according to the National Weather Service. Hydraulic Pressure Test Pump
Inland areas, which lack the sea breezes that cool Logan, were even warmer. The thermometer in Norwood hit a high of 78 degrees around 2 p.m. Worcester broke its daily temperature record with a high of 72 degrees, and Lawrence clocked a high of 76 degrees, according to the National Weather Service.
The warm weather is likely to continue Monday with a high of about 73 degrees expected, according to Torry Gaucher, a meteorologist with the weather service’s Norton office.
On Sunday, Bostonians of all stripes took advantage of the pleasant weather.
“Oh my God, [it’s] gorgeous, beautiful,” said Attleboro resident Alice Santos, as she flew a colorful V-shaped kite with two of her young grandchildren in the blustery wind on a ridge next to Fort Independence on Castle Island.
Santos’ father used to bring her to Castle Island as a little girl on beautiful days like Sunday, she said. “Now, I’m doing it for my grandchildren.”
Down past Sullivan’s restaurant, which had a line out the door, Sean Ahearn, 58, sat on a bench gazing out over Pleasure Bay as the sun broke through clouds and cast a shimmering beam across the calm waters of the bay. Next to him Summit, his 2-year-old, 139-pound Newfoundland, lapped water out of a bowl.
“I’ve been enjoying the weather immensely,” he said with a broad smile.
Ahearn, a Hyde Park resident, is a street outreach worker in Boston.
“It really means a lot to the community we work with because it means a few less winter days,” he said.
If the forecast holds on Monday, Boston will have experienced a stretch of four days with temperatures over 70 degrees.
That’s not unprecedented in November, Gaucher said. It has happened in 1930, 1953, and 2020; 1938 saw four days over 70 from Nov. 21 to Nov. 24, he said.
The streak will probably end Tuesday, when the National Weather Service forecasts temperatures falling to much more seasonable highs in the lower 50s, followed by a slight warmup.
“We’ll have a cooldown Tuesday and Wednesday,” Gaucher said. “Then temperatures, they’ll be bouncing back up into the mid-60s Thursday, Friday.” The warmer-than-normal weather won’t break until sometime next week, Gaucher said.
The average low and high temperatures for Boston this time of year are 41 degrees and 55 degrees, Gaucher said. The low temperature recorded as of 5 p.m. Sunday was 10 degrees above the seasonal average high temperature at 65 degrees, he said.
The abnormal temperatures were a source of angst for some.
“I’m scared for the earth, but enjoying it today because what are you going to do? Sit inside?” said 24-year-old East Cambridge resident Lydia Heater between games of beach volleyball on Carson Beach in Dorchester.
A 2017 University of Massachusetts Amherst study projected that temperatures in New England will rise 3.6 degrees over pre-industrial levels due to climate change, significantly faster than the national average.
There are two direct causes of Sunday’s unseasonable weather, Gaucher said. A “fairly large” high-pressure zone is sitting over the Atlantic, rotating air clockwise, bringing warm, muggy air up from the south, while a “subtropical ridge,” which is a band of high pressure, currently extends across the United States and southern Canada, he said.
“All that cold air is essentially locked in northern Canada,” Gaucher said.
The 40-some kite boarders slicing through the blue-green water of Pleasure Bay wouldn’t mind too much if it stayed up in Canada a little while longer.
George Warner, a 63-year-old boarder from Brookline, has been out on the water every day since Friday. Devotees like him come out in much worse weather, but Sunday’s warmth meant they could wear light wetsuits and have hands and feet bare.
“It’s butter flat,” Warner said, pointing at the water near the jetty where dozens of boarders built up speed before flying as high as two stories into the air boosted by a strong wind from the southwest.
“I’m staying until sunset,” one kite boarder told another as he suited up on the beach for another go-round. Then he hesitated. “Until after sunset, probably.”
Alexander Thompson can be reached at alexander.thompson@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @AlMThompson
Temperature Standard Thermometer Work at Boston Globe Media