As you stroll through the blossoming cherry trees this week, take the time to stop, smell the flowers and do the math: y = 0.37x + 34.11, to be exact.

This is the precise mathematical formula used to determine when these trees bloom.

The National Cherry Blossom Festival, one of Washington’s biggest attractions, draws thousands to the Tidal Basin each spring. Daily performances, a parade, a street festival, art exhibits and kite-flying are all part of Washington’s massive cherry tree celebration.

But it’s not all fun and games. It takes careful calculations and planning to determine the exact date the trees will bloom. It would be tragic, after all, to plan a huge party and not have the guest of honor show up.

Experts at the National Park Service study the trees very closely in the months leading up to the festival. They use mathematical formulas and monitor bud development to compile the festival dates. According to Jeff Stehr, the effort is admirable but unnecessary.

Stehr, an assistant research scientist in the university’s Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science, believes determining the blooms’ arrival is less about complex calculations and more a simple matter of “noticing pretty trees.”

During the past few years, Stehr has noticed the trees outside the Computer and Space Sciences building usually bloom two weeks before their famous Washington counterparts. When he predicted the trees along the Tidal Basin to bloom last Saturday, he was almost exactly in sync with the National Park Service’s estimated peak blooming time.

Stehr is no botanist or tree expert. He studies air pollution and explains it’s just about observing the world around him. However, predicting the arrival of the cherry blossoms is tricky business.

“They’re really sensitive to exactly what the weather is two months before they bloom,” Stehr says. For instance, if the weather suddenly gets spring-like for a week or two, the trees can “rip through several stages of development, and bam! Everything just comes flying out all of a sudden.”

No matter when the peak blooming is, the tiny pink and white flowers are always a welcomed sign of spring’s arrival. The festival provides a great, low-cost venue for university students to enjoy the season.

Sophomore economics and international business major Kelly Ralston admits she and a group of friends skipped class to check out the festival last year.

“We decided to make a day of it,” Ralston says, adding she and her friends enjoyed a relaxing paddle-boat ride in the Tidal Basin.

“I didn’t realize how pretty the cherry blossoms were,” she says, adding she’s looking forward to this year’s festival. “Hopefully I’ll be able to catch more of the festival-type things, like the people performing.”

Performance opportunities are another blossoming aspect of the festival for university students. The university’s Nyumburu Jazz Club Quartet will join the myriad amateur and professional groups performing on the steps of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial throughout the next two weeks.

Randy Coleman, the jazz club president and the quartet’s bassist, says this event is a big deal for his group.

“It’s important for the jazz club to get noticed off campus,” he says. “We have done that to an extent before, but no exposure that’s this big.”

The quartet plays twice, tomorrow at 2:15 p.m. and April 9 at 1 p.m. April 9 is a special day devoted to jazz music in honor of Jazz Appreciation Month.

While many of the festival performances center around Japanese culture, there is no shortage of variety. Performing groups include the Hiroshima Boys Choir, the Blue Ridge Thunder Cloggers and martial arts demonstrators. Not only Japanese, but French, Indian, Latin American and many other cultures are also represented in the array. The performances begin at noon every day until April 9.

Taking advantage of the outdoors, the festival also offers guided bike and photograph tours as well as many exhibits about Japanese art and culture. At the Tidal Basin, there will be a fireworks show Saturday, April 1, at 8:15 p.m. and a formal lantern lighting ceremony Sunday, April 2, at 2:30 p.m.

The annual parade will be on Constitution Avenue Saturday, April 8 at 10 a.m. Special guests include Wheel of Fortune’s Pat Sajak as the grand marshal and singer Martha Wash (think “It’s Raining Men” and “Everybody Dance Now”). The parade will be followed by a Japanese street festival.

The festival began last Saturday and will continue until Sunday, April 9.

Contact reporter Rebecca Wise at wisedbk@gmail.com.