Aru Nair

And he told me every single year, locals and tourists flood the National Mall for the annual Cherry Blossom Festival to view these millions of flowers.

But as you know, Emily, these flowers are really fragile and they're only around for a couple of weeks.

And in some cases, it's been as short as five days.

So the festival is ideally planned for when all these trees are in peak bloom.

And I wanted to know, what is peak bloom really?

So I asked Mike Glitters to define it for me.

He's the chief of communications for the National Mall and Memorial Parks.

Exactly.

And the National Parks team, it's actually their job to predict when the peak bloom will arrive every year.

And let's just say it's kind of a guesstimate.

Today on the show, the art and science of guessing peak bloom.

What are the stages of cherry tree blossoming?

And how do scientists make that big prediction?

Well, I didn't really know.

So to find out, I went with one of our producers, Hannah Chin, down to the tidal basin.

It was damp and chilly.

You could hear the jets overhead and the trees looked totally bare.

That sounds like D.C.

in winter.

Yeah.