Picking peak week for blossom in Washington DC
Each spring, Washington DC is awash with beautiful coloured blossom. Most famously, the cherry trees burst into white and pink blooms and are celebrated with the annual Cherry Blossom Festival. But nature doesn’t operate on a set schedule and the date for the peak week for blossom in Washington DC changes each year.
It’s spring here in Melbourne, which means that the streets around my home are currently adorned with blossoms in gorgeous soft whites and pinks of all shades – which remind me of the stunning display of spring blooms we encountered when we visited Washington DC in the first week of April this year.
Shortly after I had organised the itinerary for our US trip, I found out about Washington DC’s National Cherry Blossom Festival. There are approximately 3,750 cherry blossom trees of 16 varieties on National Park Service land (around the Tidal Basin in West Potomac Park, in East Potomac Park (Hains Point), and on the Washington Monument grounds). The original cherry trees were a gift in 1912 from the people of Japan to the United States as gesture of friendship and goodwill, and many more have been planted since. The National Cherry Blossom Festival is a celebration based around the blooming of those cherry trees.
I worked out that there was a reasonable likelihood that our visit (April 5 – 8) would coincide with the ‘peak week’ for blossom in Washington DC as, historically, the most likely time for the cherry trees to reach peak bloom is between the last week of March and the first week of April. So I then started diligently checking the US National Park Service’s website for its predictions of peak bloom dates.
The peak bloom date is defined as the day when 70% of the Yoshino Cherry blossoms are open. But of course, nature doesn’t operate to a strict schedule and the progress of the blossom varies each year depending on weather conditions. The last US winter was a particularly cold and long one, and slowed down the blossom proceedings.
Forecasting the peak bloom is almost impossible more than 10 days in advance, and although statistically, we were in with a good chance of hitting peak bloom, this year peak bloom was April 10. Missed it by two days!
However, missing ‘the peak’ really didn’t matter…as we still saw the cherry blossoms as they were opening, and there was just so many other beautiful trees in bloom around the city, that we were almost a bit overwhelmed by the spring riot. So we felt we’d hit peak week for blossom in Washington DC anyway….even if it wasn’t the cherry blossom peak.
The take-away from this experience is that unless you are someone who can drop everything and jump on a plane with a few day’s notice (and who are those people?), overseas travellers have to be pretty lucky to encounter the National Cherry Blossom Festival in its peak week.
However, any visitors arriving around the last week of March, first week of April can still enjoy spectacular spring colour all over the city.
