How sakura nyc works

Every cherry tree on this map is real. I pull 44,000+ Prunus trees from the NYC Parks Forestry dataset — the same tree census the city uses. Each dot is a tree someone surveyed, tagged, and recorded.

Cherry blossoms don't bloom on a calendar — they bloom when it's warm enough. I use a model called Growing Degree Days (Chung et al., 2011): starting February 1st, I add up daily warmth above 4.3°C. When the total hits 221 heat units, the Yoshinos hit peak bloom. Every morning, I fetch real temperature history from Open-Meteo and calculate where we are.

Not every spot blooms at the same time. Brooklyn Botanic Garden, sheltered and south-facing, leads by a week or more. Riverside Park, exposed to Hudson River winds, trails behind. Each location has a microclimate offset so you can see who's blooming first.

The 7-day outlook comes from the National Weather Service. I project future GDD accumulation to show you when bloom stages will shift — so you can plan your hanami.

NYC has six main types of cherry. Okame blooms first (vivid pink bells), then Yoshino (the classic pale clouds), then Kwanzan (deep pink, 50 petals each). Higan, Sargent, and Japanese fill in around them. The filter pills let you see each species on the map.