Cherry blossom super fan never misses peak bloom in Washington, DC

To Jenny Blakemore, cherry blossoms are more than the springtime symbol of the nation's capital – they're tied to her own love story.

The iconic Washington, D.C., trees illustrate Blakemore's romance through the years with her husband and fellow cherry blossom fan Chris Blakemore. This spring marks 11 years since he proposed surrounded by the blooming trees, and 10 years since the couple married in a cherry blossom-themed ceremony.

The couple and their three daughters will continue the tradition this year along with the crowd of more than a million people expected to converge on the city in late March and early April during the season's peak bloom, when the cherry trees burst into pink flowers. Cherry trees across the U.S. erupt into blossoms at this time of year, but the nation's capital is among the most famous destinations for cherry blossom tourism.

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The emerging blossoms also signal the beginning of the National Cherry Blossom Festival, the city's monthlong springtime celebration.

Blakemore played her own role in the festival during the 2012 celebration of the 100th anniversary of the planting of the Japanese cherry trees around the Tidal Basin. She held an opening ceremony party in the Betsey Johnson store in Georgetown where she worked at the time, and planted one of the 100 commemorative cherry trees introduced to the city that year.

"That's what's lovely about DC," she said. "You walk around anywhere in DC and find cherry blossoms and find your secret little trees that make you feel happiness."

When will cherry blossom blooms peak this season?

The trees reached peak bloom on Sunday, a bit earlier than expected, the National Park Service announced. And that's also several weeks earlier than the historic average peak bloom day of April 3 or 4, NPS Chief of Communications Mike Litterst said.

"Over the last 10 to 20 years, we're seeing peak bloom fall much more regularly in late March rather than early April," he said.

Litterst said he's keeping an eye on a cold front expected on Thursday after a spate of days in the 70s last week.

"What we absolutely want to avoid is sub-freezing temperatures once we get in those last couple stages of the bloom cycle," Litterst said. "If we hit temperatures 27 or below while the petals are out, that can cause frost burn on the petals, and that can unfortunately affect the peak bloom."

The last time that happened was in 2017, when three straight nights of temperatures below 25 degrees froze around half of the blossoms. Luckily, that's "extremely uncommon," Litterst said.

More:A look at Cherry Blossoms blooming around the world

The National Mall has 11 different types of cherry trees out of a total of 430 species worldwide. This week's blooms come from the Yoshino trees, but those aren't the first to bloom, according to the National Park Service. Okame cherry trees bloom a couple weeks earlier than the Yoshino trees, which produce the light pink blooms recognizable from iconic pictures of the Tidal Basin.

Peak bloom refers to the date when 70% of the Yoshino trees open, according to the NPS. But those who miss them can still catch the blossoms of Kwanzan trees, which bloom about two weeks later, Litterst said.

The blooming period can last for up to two weeks, depending on weather conditions, according to the National Cherry Blossom Festival.

The first cherry trees arrived in Washington as a gift of friendship from the city of Tokyo in 1910, according to the NPS. Unfortunately, inspectors discovered that the first shipment of 2,000 trees were diseased, and then-President William Taft ordered them burned.

Two years later, the Tokyo City Council authorized a second shipment of more than 3,000 trees. On March 27, 1912, First Lady Helen Herron Taft and Viscountess Chinda, the wife of Japanese Ambassador Sutemi Chinda, planted the first two cherry trees on the bank of the Tidal Basin, and the tradition was born.

A blossoming love story

Growing up in the Washington area, Blakemore was drawn to the cherry trees as a little girl. "I've loved them since the day I saw them," she said.

By her early 20's, Blakemore, now 44, began her annual pilgrimage to the Tidal Basin every spring to take in the sight of the brilliant pink trees. That was also when she started dating her now-husband Chris Blakemore, a high school classmate also from the area.

The couple's romance blossomed against the backdrop of the cherry trees for more than a decade before he proposed.

On the day the blooms peaked in 2013, Chris Blakemore got down on one knee and asked Jenny to marry him after a stroll around the Tidal Basin.

A year later, as the trees broke into bloom again, the pair married in a pink-filled ceremony replete with cherry blossoms.

"I wanted something magical, so I could tell my children," she said.

The Blakemores have since moved to nearby Falls Church, a Virginia suburb of the district, where they are raising three daughters, ages 4, 5, and 7, in a house ringed with cherry trees.

Jenny Blakemore passed her cherry blossom obsession to the next generation – her daughter, a Girl Scout, earned the official cherry blossom patch after she planted one of the trees with her mom's help last year.

Even after experiencing many cherry blossom seasons, Blakemore thinks they only get better every year.

"The beauty overwhelms me," she said.

Cybele Mayes-Osterman is a breaking news reporter for USA Today. Reach her on email at cmayesosterman@usatoday.com. Follow her on X @CybeleMO.