“Oh, the weather outside is frightful.”

Actually, no.

“Baby, it’s cold outside.”

Nope.

“Jack Frost nipping at your nose.”

Not lately.

The calendar may say Dec. 1, but a string of unusually warm days means November is on track to being the warmest on record, according to the National Weather Service.

“For all intents and purposes, we’ve broken the record at this point,” meteorologist Margaret Curtis said Wednesday. She added that the month didn’t officially end until midnight, then the data have to be crunched.

For a while Wednesday, Maine had the highest temperature in the country, excluding Hawaii. According to a Weather Channel map, at 7:15 a.m., the temperature in Bangor was 62; temperatures in Florida, Georgia, Texas and Southern California were 52, 39, 27 and 52, respectively.

By Dec. 1, Maine typically has snow on the ground and temperatures are in the 30s now, Curtis said. The average temperature for November is 38.3 degrees, according to the National Weather Service.

So, temps in the 50s and 60s are taking a toll on some holiday moods.

“It doesn’t feel like Christmas,” said Ken Blais, co-owner of Rolly’s Diner in Auburn, locally famous for enthusiastically decorating at Christmastime.

As of Wednesday, Blais had not yet decked the halls.

Usually, his restaurant goes festive the Monday after Thanksgiving. “We’re midway through the week and we haven’t even started,” he said.

He plans to decorate this weekend: a fireplace with a mantle, a Christmas tree on a stage, a wall covered with thousands of snowflakes.

Warm weather means not having to worry about plowing or storms keeping patrons away. But a little snow would be nice to spread that Christmas feeling, Blais said.

Dottie Perham-Whittier, community relations coordinator for the city of Lewiston, was thrilled with the warm weather as she planned Wednesday’s annual Christmas tree lighting and parade.

“It’s wonderful,” Perham-Whittier gushed. Some years it’s been extremely cold, she said. “We welcome this with abundance.”

Ed Bushman of the Dun Roamin Christmas Tree Farm in Lewiston said the warmth hadn’t hampered tree sales.

It hasn’t been ideal for Maine’s ski resorts, said Darcy Morse, a spokeswoman for Sunday River. But the snowstorm before Thanksgiving and several stretches of cold weather have allowed the state’s largest resorts, Sunday River in Newry and Sugarloaf in Carrabassett Valley, to use their snow-making systems to get trails open.

“The nice thing about the weather coming in is it is supposed to stay cold through Friday night, so we are ready to rock and roll with the snow-making and actually have snow-making guns on right now,” Morse said Wednesday night.

Sean Birkel, a post-doctoral research associate at the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine, said one spell of above- or below-normal weather is not necessarily a symptom of climate change.

But, historical temperatures show Maine is warming, especially the winters. Those who think Maine winters aren’t as cold as they used to be are right, Birkel said. On average, Maine winters see three weeks more of frost-free grounds than the state did in the 1800s, he said.

“The Penobscot Bay between Belfast and Castine used to freeze over,” Birkel said. The ice was so thick that cars could drive over it. “The last time it froze was 1934,” he said. “It doesn’t happen anymore.”

Forecasts for the next several days call for temperatures to cool to the mid-40s, which will still be above average for early December.

[email protected]