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Conditions for D.C.'s Beautiful Cherry Blossom Bloom Are Just Right

By Published On 03/06/2020

It's not always the case, but the gorgeous cherry blossom bloom in Washington, DC is projected to arrive on schedule this year.

The National Cherry Blossom Festival is a spectacular event in the nation's capital, drawing around 1.5 million people. The festival runs from March 20 to April 12. However, that doesn't mean that every day of the festival is created equal. If you're going, you want to be there during peak bloom, the time when the bright pink flowers are exploding with color. (And tourists are stopping every 10 feet for that Instagram-worthy image to prove they were there.)

The National Park Service (NPS) defines peak bloom as the day when 70% of the Yoshino cherry trees in the capital's Tidal Basin are in bloom. The NPS puts out an annual projection, while simultaneously noting it's basically impossible to accurately predict the bloom more than 10 days in advance. Nonetheless, the NPS does its best to make sure the predicted date is updated as they know more to help travelers plan their visit.

The NPS currently projects peak bloom will occur from March 27-30.

The typical peak bloom date arrives sometime during the last week of March and the first week of April. Historically, the date has fallen anywhere from March 15 to April 18. That underscores how hard it can be to project the date. "Forecasting peak bloom is almost impossible more than 10 days in advance," the agency writes on its Bloom Watch site. "The cherry trees' blossom development is dependent on weather conditions, which are inherently variable."

Once peak bloom lands, the blossoms stick around for up to two weeks, providing a nice window for you to get to DC and admire the trees, which were a gift from the mayor of Tokyo in 1912. However, these trees are vulnerable to freezing temperatures. In 2017, an early bloom coincided with freezing temperature and killed about half of the blossoms before the peak even arrived. 

The projection will almost certainly be adjusted as we get closer. If you're planning a trip, pay attention to the NPS site or check back here. We'll update the date as the NPS make more information available. 

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Dustin Nelson is a Senior Staff Writer at Thrillist. Follow him @dlukenelson.

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Travel

NASA Just Released the Highest Resolution Photo of Mars' Surface Ever

By Published On 03/05/2020

Mars has captured our imagination for decades and decades. Sending rovers across the fourth planet from the sun hasn't dulled that enthusiasm. It's still as mysterious as ever, even as we learn new details from the science happening there.

This new image will only fuel that fire. NASA's Curiosity rover has sent back a 1.8-billion pixel image of the Martian landscape. It's the highest-resolution panorama of the Mar's surface to date, and it's stunning.

MORE: 2020 will be a great year for meteor showers -- here's when and how to watch the best ones.  

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5 Restaurants That Are Revamping Classic Food in Bold New Ways

By Published On 12/19/2019

Every so often you hear a song that sounds both brand new and like it came from another era. It’s somehow got novelty and timelessness, hand-in-hand -- and more often than not, it ends up being a hit. Restaurants sometimes do this, too, taking a classic culinary style and updating it for the current era, adding modern touches and techniques to traditional cuisine to create something new and delightful. We found a fistful of such places around the country, starting with Cafe La Trova in Miami (the subject of our updated-classics video), which echoes 1950s Cuba in its vibrant cocktail program and inspired riffs on Cuban fare. We’re also shining a light on a Mexican restaurant where they use masa, an ancient ingredient, alongside modern, locally sourced touches; an Upstate New York diner that is unlike -- and somehow also still very much like -- any diner you’ve ever eaten in; and a Miami spot taking traditional Southern food to tasty new places, to name a few. Whichever of these restaurants you choose to visit, you’re guaranteed to find the old and the new combining in ingenious, delicious fashion. 

We can be better than this. | Photo: Shutterstock; Illustration: Emily Carpenter/Thrillist
Photo: Shutterstock; Illustration: Emily Carpenter/Thrillist
Travel

It’s Bloom Time For America’s Most Spectacular Wildflowers. Please Don’t Ruin It!

By Published On 03/05/2020

We do love a good floral bloom in this country. Each spring, the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve re-emerges as a national treasure, carpeting the horizon in orange poppies sprinkled with fiddlenecks and forget-me-nots. It's an explosive display of nature's more painterly instincts, elevating a beige-ish desert landscape -- coyotes, dirt, tumbleweeds -- into technicolor. 

It would be nice if we could simply collectively enjoy one of nature’s most spectacular displays without endeavoring to kill it, but unfortunately there is something about the pollen and saturated colors and lure of Instagram clout that makes people forget how to act. For the past several years, Instagram influencers in particular have prompted tens of thousands to seek whimsical profile pics of drowning in poppies. Just out of the frame: the mangled swaths of all the flowers they’ve uprooted and crushed, and the hordes of other tourists doing the exact same thing. Last year two enterprising and depraved visitors landed an actual helicopter in the fields, but don’t think it takes something that extreme to cause serious damage. Flowers are delicate! The damage you -- just you, one single individual person -- inflict from not sticking to the trail can mar the growth for years.