NEW YORK — As temperatures soared into the 90s, the heat and humidity hit the concrete in Astoria, Queens, and bounced into the air. People moved along the scorched sidewalk slowly, their clothes drenched with sweat.

Elianne Alvarado, 44, who was raised in New York City and has lived here for most of her life, ascended the steps to the elevated Astoria Boulevard subway station, fanning herself with a sheet of paper. She was looking forward to escaping the heat in an air-conditioned train.

“I don’t ever remember it being this hot,” Alvarado told Stateline. “I remember other summers being nice, not that hot. But this week has been crazy.”

The heat wave that pummeled New York state and much of the East Coast and Midwest last week and into the weekend broke daily records in several cities. On June 19, Boston (98 degrees); Hartford, Connecticut (97); and Providence, Rhode Island (91), all set new highs for that date. In New York City, temperatures reached the low 90s — not a record, but plenty hot enough to cause misery, especially with humidity and the radiant heat from concrete and asphalt.

The Northeast is not the hottest part of the country, but several states in the region are among those where average temperatures have increased the most over the past two decades. In recent years, climate change has forced states such as Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York to take extreme heat more seriously. In preparing for a hotter future, some of them are copying the policies of states that are used to sizzling temperatures, such as Arizona, Florida and Louisiana.

Public health officials in Connecticut and New York, for example, are partnering with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to ensure that their most vulnerable residents — older and lower-income people — are better prepared for extreme heat and other aspects of climate change. And in April, New Jersey published a draft Extreme Heat Resilience Action Plan, recognizing that, “while the state remains committed to reducing emissions, New Jersey is past the point of avoiding all climate change impacts and needs to enact measures to adapt.”

“New Jersey is a northern state, and it is not necessarily the folks that are hardest hit by this phenomenon of extreme heat compared to, for example, the desert Southwest,” said Nathaly Agosto Filión, deputy chief climate resilience officer for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.

“But for that reason, much of our built environment is maybe not as well designed to withstand the impacts, and much of our population sort of undervalues the extent to which it is a problem for our communities.”

New Jersey’s draft plan includes 133 action items, but the first priority is helping New Jerseyans cope with the heat. The state aims to do that by beefing up emergency preparedness and response; providing public cooling centers; planting more trees; and adopting workplace safety rules, among many other steps. It also plans a public information campaign to make people — especially vulnerable populations such as older and homeless people — aware of the risks of extreme heat.

“We’re also talking about outdoor workers, we’re also talking about athletes, we’re also talking about folks that are pregnant or breastfeeding — these are all subpopulations that are really important to engage,” Agosto Filión said.

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