The National Cherry Blossom Festival is one of Washington’s most popular tourist attractions, drawing more than 1.5 million visitors for three weeks of street parties, concerts, family activities and days to go fly a kite.

There is no surer sign of springtime in Portland than the arrival of the cherry blossoms. Those pink-and-white fluffs, that cotton-candy canopy—the way the rain of petals feels, as Bryan Vance put it on a recent episode of City Cast Portland, like something out of a Disney movie. It’s incredible. And fleeting.