FRANKLIN—MacKenzie Gay tanned in the sun for more than an hour Thursday, when temperatures in Franklin hit 86 degrees, tying a record set for the same day in 1990.

“It’s strange,” said the 16-year-old Franklin girl, who was lying on the patio of her home at Meadow Ridge Apartments. “I definitely was not laying out in the sun last March.”

That’s because the average high for March 15 is 61 degrees and average low, 37, according to Weather.com.

A record low of 15 degrees was set in 1993.

High pressure off the Atlantic bringing in warm southerly air was the reason for the unseasonably warm day, said meteorologist Dan Proch with the National Weather Service in Wakefield.

Friday’s forecast calls for 80 degrees and a 60 percent chance of rain, and Saturday should be in the mid-70s with a 40 percent chance of rain, Proch said.

The possibility of rain didn’t keep Franklin brothers Jessie and Curtis Pope from taking advantage of Thursday’s weather to wash their cars.

“It’s unbelievable,” said Jessie Pope, 23, who went shirtless while cleaning his 1998 Mercury Grand Marquis at Solar Wash Car Wash on Armory Drive. “Usually, it’s not this warm in March.”

Cleaning his 1996 Ford Crown Victoria, Curtis Pope, 22, said his car needed a cleaning inside and out.

“The weather is good out and it was in need of a good cleaning,” he said.

As for MacKenzie, she was joined outside with her grandmother, Grace Rodgester, 72.

“It’s nice because I stay in the house most of the time,” said Rodgester, a retired meat cutter for Boar’s Head Provision Co. in Jarratt.