Cherry Blossoms Arrive on Schedule this Year - But What's a Schedule Now?

Before the rain and cloudy skies arrived, did you get out to see the Cherry blossoms last weekend?

Wednesday's Seattle Times had a front page piece about tracking the dates of Cherry blossoms for science.

Seattle Times front page, 20th

They wrote:

In 2018, [university researchers] began collecting data on bud development and bloom for more than 100 trees covering 25 species on campus, to help inform local events centered on the bloom....

Records in Kyoto, Japan, and Washington, D.C., suggest those cities’ cherry trees are blooming earlier in response to a changing climate. UW researchers have hypothesized the bloom would also be earlier as a result of increases in spring temperatures but only if the trees experienced winter temperatures cool enough to complete their dormant, or rest period.

Researchers in 2011 found peak bloom in D.C. could be as much as four weeks earlier by 2080 depending on how much warming occurs.

“The cherry blossom has been kind of used as an indicator of climate change that we can see,” said Soo-Hyung Kim, a UW professor....

This year here in Salem peak bloom at the Capitol happened "on schedule," happily coincident with last weekend's nice weather and the officially scheduled "Blossom Day."

Front page here, March 17th

Last year, you may recall, it was "behind schedule."

Front page, March 15th last year

In 2015, our warmest year on record, the blossoms arrived early.

March 7th, 2015

The year-to-year variation in blossoming dates might look like homeostatic fluctuation around a "normal" or "schedule."

But it is very likely longer term trends are shifting the center of any "average," so much that any "schedule" is fictive.

Out in the Gorge, Cherry growers have struggled with climate disruption, suffering "four years of challenging seasons."

August 2023

At a time when we aren't thinking so much about drought, heat, wildfire, and smoke, as with snowpack and ski resorts, Cherries could be a good way to message on climate. Cherry Blossom Day is a climate story also.

The nice weather last weekend, as well as the theme of transience in the display of blossoms, made for a good day to visit the cemetery and its memento mori.

David Logan, et. al.

April 4th, 1874