Yesterday’s sunrise was amazing. I checked my weather app the night before and it looked very promising. So I was excited to get out to the Tidal Basin, shoot sunrise and check on the status of the cherry blossoms.
You can see in this image that they are budding. I may have seen one or two trees that had a couple of blossoms on them but for the most part they looked like this. They definietly won’t be blooming this week. Hopefully by the end of next week. However the color in the sky and the cherry blossoms were not my main focus once I arrived. It was all the flooding that was on the sidewalks! There was so much water everywhere. A lot of the southern part of the Tidal Basin, close to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, had large puddles and some were so big that they were impassable. It had got to the point where I really regretted my decision of wearing sneakers instead of rain boots. It made the grass all muddy and overall a really swampy situation.
I’ve seen the Tidal Basin flood before, but there had always been a reason. This day for example was right after we had a huge thunderstorm so obviously it was flooded. This day was crazy foggy and there was a lot of moisture in the air so I’m assuming that’s why it flooded. But we haven’t had any rain or snow in almost a week. There really is no reason why the sidewalks should have been flooded like they were. It’s bananas.
So if you’re like me and want to do something about it, check out the Trust for the National Mall’s website so we can help protect the Tidal Basin and Cherry Blossoms.
The camera settings for this image is F5.6 at 1/40th of a second and ISO 500 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.