weather things! – Nerdwatch!

Now that (climatological) Spring has sprung, they’re finally finishing up the reconstruction work on the DC Tidal Basin seawall, which was rebuilt to withstand the high tides better that the 100+ year-old wall. The old wall was constantly being eroded from beneath, because they didn’t know how much the tides ebbing and flowing would affect the rock and soil underneath, This caused it to subside, leaving the cherry trees along the wall exposed to brackish salty water as it flooded higher and higher during each high tide.

They had to completely dig out the old wall and support, as well as remove the old cherry trees, which couldn’t really be saved due to age and damage. They finished construction on the wall earlier this year, and finished laying new sod along the new walkways just before the snow fell.

Fresh sod, needs to be watered when first laid down.

Now that the snow has finally completely melted, they’re planting new cherry trees along the seawall. In honor of the 250th anniversary of the US, the government of Japan donated 250 replacement cherry trees, which more than replace the ones we lost. The original trees were a gift from Japan, and there are several different species that will bloom at different times during the spring, and have different types of blossoms. Some of the trees already have blossoms, although I’m not sure what species of tree they are.

Only a few more weeks, there are already a few tiny buds on the old trees, I’ll be checking back every few days till then!

Okay, maybe not that much of an upheaval, but I thought I would at least try to start doing more of these, at least on a more timely basis!

If you haven’t seen the news for the past month, there was a major snow and ice storm a couple of weeks ago, and DC was hit fairly hard, somewhat by snow but mostly by sleet and ice on top of the snow.

We’ve also been mostly below freezing for two weeks, which hasn’t helped, but this past Wednesday the temperature got up to 50 degrees, so I figured I’d go back downtown and walk around a bit. I did that last week, and got some pictures but it was too cold to do much.

This week though, it’s been warmer, and I got to places I couldn’t go last week. I managed to park in the Potomac Park parking lot and walked to the Jefferson Memorial on the Tidal Basin. It was a much nicer walk than last week, although the ice and snow were still quite thick, and the Tidal Basin was still mostly frozen over, but the ice was noticeably thinner. Even the Potomac River near the DC Wharf restaurant area was frozen over, with the only boat that I could see possibly stuck in the ice.