For a second successive Sunday, the cherry blossoms remained in bloom in the capital, displaying their brilliant whiteness against a bright blue sky on Palm Sunday, this year’s first Sunday of astronomical spring.
Instead they remained in profuse bloom to form part of the glitter and sunny sparkle of an early spring day in Washington. Against a deep blue sky that seemed without clouds, the masses of white petals seemed from below to suggest the gleam of snow on a mountaintop.
An occasional hint of coolness in the air helped suggest that looking upward at the cherry blossoms was to approach a magical zone of thin air and snow-capped peaks.
The afternoon’s high temperature was 53 degrees, six below the normal high for the 24th of March. The morning’s low temperature also seemed to lag what might be expected for Sunday’s date.
At 33 degrees, it was eight below the normal low temperature in Washington for March 24.
The low was only a single degree above freezing. It was not what might have been expected in a month when the overall temperature has been more than six degrees warmer than the average.
The low of 33 degrees was recorded at 6:23 a.m., about 40 minutes before the sun rose. And at Dulles International Airport, the mercury did fall in the morning to the freezing mark of 32.
Such readings seem almost chilly enough to arouse recollections of winter, and perhaps to suggest that January might still lurk nearby, concealed in the shadows, ready to taunt and mock the fanciers of spring.
However, to be on the streets and sidewalks of the city Sunday, particularly in the afternoon, meant recognizing the potency of late-March sunshine.
Its readily available warming power seemed to banish doubts that spring had made secure its foothold here.
On a day without clouds, it seemed everywhere At the Tidal Basin, it reflected from the cameras of visitors, the metal fittings of baby carriages and the bodies of nearby vehicles.
It beamed on the blossoms, individually and in the aggregate. It illuminated the blossoms that faced it directly, emphasizing the whiteness in them, as if they reflected a spotlight.
At the same time, the sun’s rays seemed to shine through many blossoms, finding the subtle pinkness in them, suggesting that they were subtly tinted windows.
And it also cast the faint shadow of one petal or blossom or branch upon its neighbors.
