California growers are wrapping up perhaps their best and largest sweet cherry harvest ever as Washington’s harvest gets underway.

“This is by far one of the best crops in history on all fronts. Quality is awesome and as of today we’re almost 8.3 million boxes,” Chris Zanobini, executive director of the California Cherry Advisory Board in Sacramento, said.

The crop will end up at nearly 9 million, 18-pound boxes, possibly surpassing the 8.7 million box record crop of 2008, he said. It was 5.1 million boxes last year after losing about 3 million boxes to rain.

California’s cherry industry has had many disappointments in recent years. Rain or heat significantly reduced crops several seasons. Inadequate winter chill led to poor fruit set in 2014 and a crop of just 2.7 million boxes. And 2005 and 2006 were at 3 million boxes or less.

Roger Pepperl, marketing director of Stemilt Growers, Wenatchee, Wash., said California’s weather has been “impeccable” and its cherry crop the “best ever.”

Stemilt is a large cherry producer, packer and marketer in Washington and operates in California through its company, Chinchiolo Stemilt California, in Stockton.

“It’s diminished volume now, but it’s been super high quality in color and sugar. Consumers are turned on and the table is set for a great Washington deal,” Pepperl said.

The Pacific Northwest crop is forecast at 22.7 million boxes with Washington harvesting 81 percent of that. The Northwest counts by 22-pound boxes and California by 18-pound boxes.

Washington harvest began with the Chelan variety at Doebler Orchard near Mattawa on June 6. The day before, John Doebler was removing Extenday reflective fabric between rows used to hasten ripening and was placing picker bins.

“We probably have eight or nine days on Chelans. Volume looks decent. It’s a nice crop,” Doebler said.

Stemilt would start packing the fruit in Wenatchee on June 7, he said.

Never short of pickers in the beginning, his biggest worry was the weather and a 70 percent chance of rain showers on June 8. He has already called in a helicopter once to dry the crop.

It’s a limited run for the first cherries but packing will crank up in earnest about June 15 as more orchards start picking, Pepperl said.

Growers without H-2A-visa foreign guestworkers for picking will have labor worries, and enough packers “is always a challenge,” he said.

“This labor environment is not getting any better. We think we will have enough labor packing through the season but we will have to manage it like crazy,” Pepperl said.

On May 15, Scott Brown, production manager of Morada Produce in Linden, Calif., said labor was so tight that California growers were making tough choices on which cherries to pick and which to leave.

Zanobini said he doesn’t know how extensive that was but that he’s heard few complaints about labor.

Shipments averaged 250,000 boxes per day between May 5 and June 4, with a peak of 377,000 boxes on May 23, Zanobini said. Mother’s Day and Memorial Day were good sales and prices have been very good, he said.

About 70 percent of California’s crop was sold to all regions of the U.S. and 9.4 percent to Canada, 9 percent to South Korea and the balance to Japan, China, Hong Kong and a few others, he said.

Volume is now dropping, and harvest will finish in Hollister on June 12-14, he said.