Snowflakes adorn trees at the start of Cherry Blossom season

A scene after snowfall in Alexandria, Virginia on Wednesday, Photo: Views and News

By early Wednesday afternoon, the snow storm had covered Washington metro area with several inches of snow, flakes bedecking the trees on the first day of National Cherry Blossom season.

The District recorded an accumulation of three inches of snow as did other parts of the region, keeping much of the traffic off the roads.

In Virginia, Maryland schools were closed in most of the cities as the region wore a wintry look on the full first day of the popular Cherry Blossom festival.

But the region may be lucky to escape the impact of the snowstorm on flowering of Cherry Blossoms as they are just in budding phase this week

The peak bloom in the Tidal Basin has been forecast to be between March 27 and March 31, according to the National Park Service.

“Certainly we’ll continue to look at the near term and the long-term forecast especially with snow coming over the next couple of days, or a wintery mix,” National Mall spokesman Mike Litterst said this week, according to a WTOP report.

“So, depending on that — depending on what the trees tell us as we look at them, we may change the projected peak bloom again based on all that data,”Litterst said a day before the winter storm.

But the early days of Spring are unusually busy for Washington D.C.

On Saturday, a massive March for Our Lives rally will take place to highlight the need for gun control in the wake a spate of school shootings including the deadly rampage in a school in Parkland, Florida, which killed 17 people, a majority of them students.

Organizers of the the National Cherry Blossom Festival have announced to hold the opening ceremony on Sunday instead of Saturday.

“Based on reported crowd estimates, road closures, and recommendations provided by city officials and agencies, this decision has been made in careful consideration of our ticketholders and performers,” the NCBF officials said.

On Wednesday, the Smithsonian said D.C.’s National Museum of African American History and Culture would be open to visitors with no timed entry passes required.