The sunshine came a day too late as a soggy Saturday gave way to a cloudless Sunday on the final weekend of the National Cherry Blossom Festival.
But “even the rain couldn’t hamper the spirit of the festival yesterday. Crowds were coming off in droves from the Metro in the morning,” said Diana Mayhew, executive director of the National Cherry Blossom Festival. “But it obviously wasn’t the crowds that would come without the rains.”
Saturday’s annual parade and the daylong Japanese Street Festival on Pennsylvania Avenue were the weekend finale to the 16-day event. But steady rain drove some of the expected crowds away. Final estimates weren’t available yet, but last year’s parade — on a sunny, 78-degree day — attracted about 90,000 spectators.
This year’s street festival, which drew 110,000 last year, also took a hit in terms of attendance. The city closed the outdoor festival about an hour early, at 5 p.m., because of the downpour.
Despite the rain, the festival’s overall attendance is expected to come in at about 1 million — the same as last year — thanks to the previous two weekends of sun and record crowds.
“Every year you don’t know what you’re going to get,” Mayhew said. “With a two-week festival you know you’re going to have the weather as a variable. Overall, to have one rainy day in your entire event is pretty great.”
Who comes to the National Cherry Blossom Festival?
Of the estimated 1 million visitors who attend each year, about:
» 46 percent are out-of-towners.
» 54 percent are from the Washington area.
» 16 percent are District residents.
» This year’s attendance may have suffered slightly because the dates didn’t line up with school spring breaks.
