Following mid-March’s bitter cold snap which killed about half of Washington DC’s cherry blossoms, the US capital’s National Cherry Blossom Festival celebrated the survivors’ peak bloom.
The festival which lasts until April 16, saw thousands of nature lovers descend on DC’s Tidal Basin to see the famous flowers beginning on Saturday.
Attendee Kadia Pandu told WJLA: ‘It brings you that Spring feeling like newness and freshness.’
The weather in Washington reached a balmy 78 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday, while the long-term forecast suggests no snowstorms such as Winter Storm Stella.
That bitter cold snap, which affected much of the Northeast on March 14, killed many of Washington’s cherry blossoms.
The National Parks Service had said that this past weekend would be when the survivors would peak.
Freezing temperatures that had abruptly followed unseasonably warm weather had the nation’s capital fearful for its more than 3,000 prized Japanese cherry trees, a major tourist draw.
The mercury dip to about 23 degrees Fahrenheit ‘killed virtually all of the blossoms that had reached “puffy white”‘ – the late stages of the bloom cycle – NPS spokesman Mike Litterst said in a statement.
Litterst said the other half of the cherry blossoms were at earlier stages in the bloom process, and just five percent of those appeared to be damaged.
Peak bloom – the time when 70 percent of the Yoshino trees are in full flower – around Washington’s Tidal Basin was particularly difficult to predict this year because the death of so many blossoms distorted NPS models.
The NPS had formerly expected peak bloom to fall between March 19 and March 22, so it appears the peak occurred just a little bit later..
Hundreds of thousands of people come to the US capital to see the clouds of pink flowers each year. The National Cherry Blossom Festival is a top tourist draw, bringing in tens of millions of dollars.
The festival commemorates the 1912 gift of roughly 3,000 cherry trees to Washington by the mayor of Tokyo, as a symbol of US-Japanese friendship.
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