Colleges have been on spring break, the cherry blossoms are about to bloom, and in the nation’s capital, Friday helped dismiss even the memory of winter by offering another day in the balmy and beguiling 70s.
Washington, D.C
Another day of May in March in the District
But as on the three days that came before, Washington’s upwardly mobile high temperature reached levels on Friday far above those characteristic of March, and even above the average highs for April.
Not until mid-May does Washington’s average high attain Friday’s eminence.
The high reading in Washington on Friday was 76 degrees, something of a déjà vu of the thermometer. Judged by temperature alone, Friday could scarcely be distinguished from Tuesday, when it was 75. Or from Wednesday, which was also 75. But it did fall short of Thursday, a day of 77-degree temperatures.
On that day, many of the thermally fearful may have lost interest in quarreling over whether spring had truly established itself among us. The season that at moments seemed to have seized a foothold here on Thursday was less spring than early summer.
However, Friday, with its mere 76, possibly caused by the absence of solar radiance, did fall a degree short of Thursday’s 77. And forecasts do call for some cooler days soon.
But on Friday, neither those forecasts, nor the frequent sense of the imminence of rain, could easily dispel the sense of warm-weather ease seemingly felt in Washington, as the city settled into the workday rituals and patterns of thought associated with the recent start of daylight saving time.
On Friday, rain seemed to hold off long enough, and temperatures seemed pleasant enough, for the city, at least during daylight, to have little reason to beware the Ides of March, although that was the date.
Perhaps this was symbolized by reports from the Tidal Basin. There, the cherry trees, perhaps Washington’s best known symbols of the glory of spring, seem to be advancing swiftly toward the days of seasonal apotheosis, occasioned each year by their full bloom.