Afternoons such as the one bestowed upon the District on Saturday seem to fall so close to meteorological perfection as to present a challenge.
Washington, D.C
Saturday in D.C. provided a bounty of breezy delight
In fact, Saturday seemed so full of light, warmth and pleasure as to be the absolute atmospheric opposite of the day before, which was notable for appearing gray, cool and even dismal.
On Saturday, as Washington entered the last one-third of April, the city enjoyed a day with a beguilingly warm high temperature of 75 degrees, 5 degrees above the average high for April 20.
Moreover, the warmth seemed the sort that knew its place. It adhered to limits. Even though it was accompanied by a strong sun, Saturday’s warmth seemed to stay carefully on the cool side of the boundary between spring and summer.
A breeze stirred the afternoon air, producing gusts in the 20 mph range.
On the one hand, those breezes may have circulated the particles that enhance allergies.
But in their favor, they seemed to carry no hint of the humidity that is frequently a source of warm-weather misery in the capital.
Particularly in the afternoon, the sun shone brightly, sometimes amid a flotilla of flat-bottomed clouds. In places, the clouds, largely white, at times elongated, stretched themselves across the sky.
Seen from afar, a few resembled low-slung amphibious creatures, crawling across the blue. One seemed to be modeled after a loaf of French bread, colored white.
They seemed genial, unthreatening, perhaps decorous and decorative.
Adding, in a non-quantitative way, to the day’s ingredients for enjoyment was the fact that its splendid conditions arrived on a Saturday.
It was a day on which the gifts of nature could presumably be admired outdoors, from close up, and at a leisurely pace, rather than from the inherently confining vantage of a workplace window.
In the darkness of early morning, a few raindrops fell. Official measurements said they amounted to one-hundredth of an inch.
They fell from overcast skies that seemed a carry-over from Friday. But Friday’s raindrops fell on a day without sunshine. It was a day with perhaps only those very raindrops to connect it to the brilliance of Saturday.