Plum Flowering Earliest on Record in Mito

The Mito Local Meteorological Observatory located in Mito City, Ibaraki Prefecture, 60 kilometers northeast of Tokyo, announced on December 15, 2004 that the flowering of the Japanese plum in the city was 49 days earlier than normal, the earliest record since it started observations in 1953. Mito is famous for Kairakuen, one of Japan's three finest landscape gardens, which features over 3,000 plum trees of 100 varieties. It also reported that the city saw the season's first freezing on November 29, 16 days later than normal and another record.

The average plum flowering dates between 1971 and 2000 started in the Okinawa district, the southernmost island of Japan, in early January followed by the northern Kyushu district, the southern Chugoku district, part of the Shikoku district, and the Pacific side of the Kinki, the Tokai and the Kanto districts by the end of January. The "blossom front" moved up to regions including the Kinki, the Tokai, and the Kanto-Koshin and the southern Tohoku by the end of February. Then, it went up north to the northern Tohoku area and Hokkaido, the northernmost island, in late April.

As Ibaraki Prefecture had fine weather in November 2004, the average monthly temperatures reached record highs in nine observation points including Mito and Koga. Mito recorded 12.6 degrees Celsius, 2.4 degrees above the average. The unusually warm weather that continued into December is considered to have contributed to the early flowering.



Posted: 2005/04/08 10:42:59 AM
Japanese version