Years ago, my oldest son, Michael, had a decision to make. He'd worked hard, applied to some of the best schools in the country, and found himself with acceptances from two of them — NYU and the University of Michigan. Two great universities. Two very different campus visits. And as it turned out, two very different days of weather.

The NYU visit was mostly indoors. The weather in New York that day was grey and unremarkable — the kind of city day that keeps you moving from lobby to lobby without ever really feeling the place. He was impressed. He wasn’t moved.

Next, we drove to Ann Arbor to visit Michigan. It was St. Paddy’s Day. One of those early spring afternoons that arrives like a surprise — warm, sunny, and about fifteen degrees warmer than it had any right to be. We walked the campus in shirtsleeves. Students were out everywhere. Frat guys on balconies. There was day drinking happening. The whole campus had the electricity of a great university on a great day.

By the time we got back to the car, the decision was made. He chose Michigan.

What the Research Says

A new study published last month by the National Bureau of Economic Research — and covered today in the Wall Street Journal — puts a number on what I witnessed in Ann Arbor.

Researchers at Amherst College spent eight years matching campus tour attendance records to application logs at a highly selective Northeastern university. They controlled for time of day, month, and season to isolate the effect of weather itself.

What they found is striking:

• A hot tour day reduced applications by 10.1% compared to moderate temperatures

• A cold tour day reduced applications by 5.9%

• Precipitation on tour day reduced applications by 8.3%

• Cloudy conditions reduced applications by 4.9%

Students from warmer home states were hit hardest by cold — during a cold spell, they were 14.6% less likely to apply. If you grew up in Florida or Texas and visited a Northeastern campus on a raw March day, the campus didn't stand a chance.

The researchers call it the importance of “feel” — the impression a student forms about whether they will thrive at a school. Olivia Feldman, an Amherst senior and one of the paper’s co-authors, put it plainly:

“This isn’t just a story people tell. It’s actually something that exists and affects one of the most important decisions many people make in their lives.”

The Amherst study focused on pre-application tours — students visiting before deciding where to apply. My son’s experience was different, and probably more common than the researchers’ sample suggests. We toured after he’d already been accepted. The tour wasn’t about whether to apply. It was about where to go.

That’s a higher-stakes weather moment, not a lower one. When a student is standing on a campus in March with an acceptance letter in hand and a decision deadline approaching, the weather isn’t shaping an application. It’s shaping the choice itself.

Weather Gets In

College tours are just the setting. This is really about how the weather shapes what we do … and why.

The economics literature on weather and decision-making is more robust than most people realize. Sunny days measurably increase stock market returns. Good weather drives consumer spending at retail stores. Convertible car sales correlate with warm, sunny days in ways that can’t be explained by rational preference alone. Homes shown on sunny days sell faster and at higher prices.

The weather doesn't announce itself. It just runs through us and shapes what we decide. Mike didn't choose Michigan because of the sunshine. He chose Michigan — and the sunshine was there too, doing its work.

We like to think our big decisions are insulated from something as arbitrary as the weather. The research says otherwise. We are permeable. The weather gets in. It shapes mood, narrows or expands our sense of possibility, and makes a place feel like home or feel foreign. And then it disappears from the story we tell about why we made the choice.

It’s a hidden signal. But hidden doesn’t mean unmeasurable. Weather is one of the few truly predictable inputs into human behavior — forecastable days, sometimes weeks, in advance. The signal is invisible to the people living inside it. It doesn’t have to be invisible to the people planning around it.

What Schools Are Doing About It

To their credit, some institutions are starting to take this seriously.

High Point University in North Carolina ferries visitors around campus in golf carts when temperatures climb. The University of Minnesota leans into the Gopher Way — its elaborate network of tunnels and skyways — as a selling point rather than an apology. The Amherst researchers themselves are considering distributing ice cream sandwiches on hot days, sending pre-tour weather alerts, and even telling prospective students about the study during tours to surface the unconscious bias before it operates.

“Maybe it cracks 90 degrees, and we bring out the ice cream sandwiches,” said Matthew McGann, Amherst’s dean of admission and one of the paper’s co-authors.

Awareness is the first intervention. Once you know the signal exists, you can (and should) proactively plan for it.

The Bigger Implication

If weather shapes one of the most consequential decisions a young adult makes — where to spend four years and (many!) tens of thousands of dollars — what else is it shaping?

The answer, based on the research, is: quite a lot.

Retail purchase decisions. Job offer acceptances. Real estate choices. Investment sentiment. The pattern is consistent across domains. Humans are not the rational, context-independent decision-makers that classical economic theory assumes. We are situated in the weather. It affects us whether or not we account for it.

Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs starts at the base for a reason. Physiological needs — breathing, shelter, warmth, sleep. Safety and security — health, protection from the environment. Weather touches both.

It is arguably the most fundamental and most measurable external driver of human behavior, operating at the very foundation of what makes us act, decide, and feel.

Everything above it — belonging, esteem, self-actualization — is built on top of conditions that weather shapes every day. It influences from the outside. It registers on the inside. And unlike almost every other behavioral driver, it is forecastable.

This is the premise underlying G2 Weather Intelligence — that weather is not background noise. It’s a measurable, forecastable signal that runs through consumer behavior, purchase decisions, and demand patterns in ways that most planning processes don’t explicitly model. The Amherst study is a vivid illustration of why that matters.

Back to Ann Arbor

Michael loved Michigan. He graduated with a degree in English, went on to earn his PhD, published two books, and won the 2025 University of Georgia Press poetry prize.

The academics, the culture, the size of the opportunity — he would tell you it was all of those things, and he’d be right. He made a great choice and built on it in ways I couldn't have predicted walking across that campus in the sunshine on that warm St. Patrick's Day.

But I was there. I felt what he felt. I saw the Diag full of students in shirtsleeves on an afternoon that felt like the first real day of spring. The day drinking in front of the frat houses. I watched him take it all in.

He chose Michigan for a hundred good reasons. The weather was not one of them — not consciously, not in any version of the story he tells. But it was there. It set the stage. It tilted the ground just enough.

Four years later, Bill Clinton gave the commencement address in the Big House. It was cold — genuinely cold, the kind of May morning in Michigan that reminds you winter still has opinions. We didn’t mind. The mission was complete.

That’s how weather works. It shapes the decision. Then disappears from the story we tell about why we made it.

Musical Coda

Sources: “Feel as a Determinant of College Choice: Evidence from Campus Tour Weather” — Feldman, Hyman, McGann, NBER Working Paper No. 34944, March 2026. Wall Street Journal, Roshan Fernandez, April 19, 2026 (gift link attached). Hirshleifer & Shumway (2003) on weather and stock returns. Murray et al. (2010) on weather and retail spending.

G2 Weather Intelligence™ | g2weather.com | © 2026 G2 Weather Intelligence™. All rights reserved.

“The consumer who walks into Home Depot or Lowe’s in May 2026 has a lawn that needs attention and less disposable income than a year ago. That tension — weather-driven need versus macro-constrained budget — is the defining dynamic of spring 2026.”

I’m writing this from the G2 Intelligence southern HQ at the Delaware shore. It’s April 16th. The forecast high today is 90 degrees. And I’m getting a new HVAC system installed — replacing a unit that picked the wrong spring to give up. Murphy never fails to bite me in the ass.

But this is not just a weather anecdote. It’s a demand signal. A hot and sweaty one.

April 16th. Ninety degrees. A contractor in my driveway, a technician in the crawl space, and a purchase order somewhere in the supply chain. This is what pull-forward demand looks like in practice. The record warmth that began in March hasn’t let up. Spring demand didn’t arrive in May this year. It arrived in March, six weeks early, and it hasn’t left.

NOAA released the official May 2026 monthly outlook this morning. The question is no longer whether spring came early. It did — historically early. The question is how much runway is left, and what the May weather signal means for the categories that didn’t get pulled forward.

What NOAA Confirmed This Morning

The May 2026 temperature signal is broadly bullish. The West and Northwest are the standouts — California, Oregon, and Washington all showing 65-75% probability of above-normal temperatures, translating to a 98% chance of a normal or warmer May compared to the long-term average. Only a 2% chance of a cold month.

The Southwest — Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah — has an 88% chance of being normal or warmer relative to the 30-year baseline. The South and Southeast are leaning warm at 70-78% probability.

These are not year-over-year (YoY) comparisons. They measure the likelihood that May 2026 will be at or above the 1991–2020 climatological normal. The YoY context — how May 2026 compares to May 2025 specifically — is a separate and equally important signal, addressed below.

There is no meaningful cool signal anywhere in the contiguous U.S. this May.

The precipitation signal is where it gets interesting — and where the conventional read gets it wrong.

The meaningful wet signal is concentrated in Texas and Louisiana, with a lighter fringe extending into Oklahoma and Arkansas. The Southeast — Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida — shows equal chances. No wet signal there.

That geographic distinction matters enormously when you map it against the drought.

As of April 14, 2026, the US Drought Monitor shows severe to exceptional drought conditions across large portions of Texas, Oklahoma, Georgia, Alabama, the Carolinas, and Florida. The entire Southeast is abnormally dry to severely drought-stressed.

The split sets up two very different demand stories:

Texas and Louisiana — drought-stressed and getting rain. Above-normal precipitation landing on parched ground is drought relief. Lawns recover. Weeds emerge. The L&G consumable cycle activates hard. This is a strong demand signal.

Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina — drought-stressed and staying dry. Equal chances of precipitation mean no meaningful relief in sight. Drought-stressed lawns that don’t get water don’t green up. Customers who look out at a brown lawn in May don’t buy fertilizer — they wait. This is the L&G headwind that some analysts won’t see because they aren’t looking at the drought monitor alongside the precipitation outlook. The warm temperature signal is real in these markets. The L&G activation signal is not.

The May Baseline You’re Lapping

May 2025 was the worst month of the best quarter either Home Depot or Lowe’s had seen in two years.

Home Depot posted a +0.3% U.S. comp in May 2025. Lowe’s went negative, down 1.0%. Both management teams said the same thing on their earnings calls: cold, wet weather around Memorial Day suppressed seasonal categories. Bill Boltz at Lowe’s specifically called out that the team “navigated weather challenges early in the quarter,” even as it delivered positive comps in lawn and garden.

Then July came. The weather turned favorable in the North. Home Depot posted +3.3% U.S. comp. Lowe’s hit +4.7%. The same customers who stayed home in May came out in July.

That’s the baseline. May 2026 is lapping a month that both companies would rather forget.

There is one important caveat. March 2026 was historically warm and dry — the strongest spring setup for the home sector in 132 years — and April has continued that pattern across much of the country.

That means some of the seasonal demand that would normally be activated in May has already shifted. A lawn and garden product that typically sells in the first warm weeks of May may have sold in late March or early April in markets where spring arrived early.

The pull-forward effect cuts both ways. It creates a tougher comparison within 2026 — May laps not just weak May 2025, but also a front-loaded 2026 spring. But it also signals that the customer is engaged and spending. Deferred demand is not lost demand. Categories that pull forward also tend to replenish earlier.

Warm and Wet on Drought-Stressed Ground

The Gulf Coast precipitation signal requires a two-part read, and the drought map is the key that unlocks it.

In Texas and Louisiana, warm temperatures combined with above-normal rainfall landing on drought-stressed ground is the activation event of the season. In Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas — where the drought is equally severe but the rain isn’t coming — the warm temperature signal is real, but the L&G thesis has limits.

Lawns don’t ask permission. When temperatures are warm and rainfall is consistent, grass grows aggressively, weeds proliferate, and pest pressure builds. Customers don’t choose to buy fertilizer, weed control, mulch, and pest products — their lawn makes the decision for them. These are must-buy categories, not occasion-dependent purchases.

Last May, the Gulf Coast and Southeast were already wet — Georgia was +3.74 inches above normal, Alabama +5.65 inches, Mississippi +4.14 inches. Lawn and garden still posted positive comps at both Home Depot and Lowe’s despite those conditions, because need-based categories move regardless.

This May, the Southeast stays dry. The year-over-year story for L&G in Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas is warmer temperatures against continued drought, not moisture relief. That limits the consumable repurchase cycle in Home Depot and Lowe’s’s most important markets. The warmth is a tailwind for projects and outdoor occasion categories. The L&G activation signal requires rain that isn’t in the forecast.

The categories that benefit from warm and wet in May:

Lawn and Garden consumables — fertilizer, weed control, pest products, mulch, live goods. These are need-based purchases, not want-based. Warm temperatures accelerate plant growth and weed germination. Consistent moisture amplifies both. The customer doesn’t decide to buy weed killer based on consumer confidence — they buy it because the dandelions are winning.

On drought-stressed ground that receives rainfall — Texas and Louisiana — the dynamic is pronounced. Lawns that have been brown and dormant respond visibly and quickly. Bare patches emerge. Weeds that survived the drought explode when moisture returns. Customers who held off fertilizing a struggling lawn suddenly have a recovering one worth investing in. The reactivation cycle — overseeding, fertilizer, weed control, pest products — runs harder after drought relief than after a normal spring.

The caveat is the Southeast. Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, and South Carolina are equally drought-stressed — but equal chances on precipitation means no meaningful relief in May. A warm, dry, drought-stressed market does not activate the L&G consumable cycle the same way. Customers look at a brown lawn and wait. The warm temperature signal in these markets — which are among Home Depot and Lowe’s’s highest store-concentration states — is a tailwind for project and occasion categories, but not for the need-based L&G repurchase cycle that depends on active plant growth. That requires moisture.

Pest control — warm, wet conditions are the single strongest driver of insect pressure. Ants, mosquitoes, and roaches proliferate after warm, wet periods. Pest control is not a discretionary purchase when the problem is visible.

Live goods — trees, shrubs, annuals, perennials. Warm temperatures drive customer confidence to plant. Moisture after drought reduces transplant stress dramatically — plants that would struggle in dry soil establish quickly when rainfall returns. Growers and retailers both benefit.

Lawn equipment and tools — mowers, trimmers, edgers activate with first aggressive grass growth. Warm and wet May is the strongest mowing-season signal in the calendar.

The Project Categories: A Different Story

Where warm and wet does create a genuine headwind is the project and occasion categories.

Exterior paint and stain cannot be applied in rain or high humidity. This is the single most weather-sensitive application category in the home sector.

Decking, fencing, and hardscape installation requires dry ground and dry conditions for proper setting and curing.

Outdoor entertaining — grills, patio furniture, outdoor dining — is occasion-gated. Warm rainy weekends delay the purchase decision. Memorial Day is the highest-stakes weekend for this category, and the Gulf Coast and Southeast are showing elevated precipitation risk right through that window.

Sun care — warm but wet suppresses outdoor activity and therefore sun exposure and sunscreen demand.

The split is clear: consumable, must-buy categories benefit from warm and wet. Project, occasion, and discretionary categories need dry conditions to activate fully.

The Mountain West and Pacific Northwest: The Clean Signal

The strongest unambiguous demand signal in the May 2026 outlook is west of the Rockies.

California shows a 98% chance of normal or warmer temperatures — the strongest single-state warm signal on the map — with equal chances on precipitation. Oregon and Washington are showing the same. Colorado and Montana add a drier-than-normal signal on top of strong warmth: Montana at 98% warm and 78% odds of normal or drier. Colorado at 88% warm and 73% odds of normal or drier.

These are the clean warm-and-dry markets — where every spring category activates simultaneously without the wet offset.

For retailers with West Coast and Mountain concentration, May 2026 is the setup they needed. Outdoor living, exterior projects, spring apparel, outdoor power, and L&G all point the same direction.

Applying the Climate Prediction Center’s May 2026 outlook against estimated store footprints:

Home Depot:

• 76% probability of a normal or warmer May across its store footprint

• ~17% of estimated store base in warm-and-wet markets (TX, LA) — drought relief, L&G activation

• ~43% in warm-but-dry drought markets (FL, GA, NC, Southeast) — warm temp tailwind, L&G limited by drought and no rain relief

• California — Home Depot’s largest state at approximately 230 stores — at 98% warm, equal chances on precip

Lowe’s:

• 73% probability of normal or warmer across its footprint

• ~13% of estimated store base in warm-and-wet markets (TX, LA) — drought relief signal

• North Carolina — Lowe’s third-largest state — warm but drought-stressed with no rain relief in sight. Strong temperature tailwind, muted L&G consumable signal

• ~53% of footprint in warm markets with equal chances or below-normal precip — temperature activates projects and occasion categories, drought limits L&G repurchase cycle

• North Carolina — Lowe’s third-largest state — at 70% warm with equal chances on precip

Neither company has a clean warm-and-dry signal across its core footprint. But both are lapping a May that Lowe’s CFO described as starting slower due to “wet, colder weather.” Warm conditions — even with moisture in the Gulf markets — represent a meaningful improvement over the baseline.

The Macro Overlay: Warm Weather, Cold Reality

The weather signal for May is constructive. The macro is not.

My HVAC replacement is a high-ticket, need-based purchase — the kind that happens regardless of consumer sentiment because the alternative is 90-degree heat with no air conditioning. That’s the resilient end of the home improvement market. The consumer who has to spend spends. Me included. (Damn it!)

But the Iran conflict has added a sustained energy price shock to an already pressured consumer. Gasoline prices are running well above year-ago levels — a direct tax on household budgets that falls hardest on the middle and lower-income consumers who drive home improvement and lawn and garden foot traffic. Tariff-driven inflation has raised the effective price of a wide range of home improvement products, from power tools to outdoor furniture to seasonal hardlines. The consumer who wants to spend is thinking twice.

The consumer who walks into Home Depot or Lowe’s in May 2026 has a lawn that needs attention and less disposable income than a year ago. That tension — weather-driven need versus macro-constrained budget — is the defining dynamic of spring 2026.

The resolution is category-specific. Lawn and garden need-based products — fertilizer, weed control, pest control, mulch — are largely non-discretionary. The lawn grows whether or not the consumer feels confident. These categories will move. Big-ticket discretionary — riding mowers, patio sets, outdoor kitchens — are more exposed to the macro headwind. Customers who need to buy will. Customers who want to buy may wait.

The Category Signal Summary

The Technician Is Still in the Crawl Space

By the time the installation is done, my new HVAC unit will be running on one of the warmest April days on record at the Delaware shore. A purchase that should have happened in June, pulled forward by a spring that arrived in March and never left.

That’s the story of May 2026. The weather signal is as close to Goldilocks as spring gets — broadly warm, wet where drought needs relief, dry where projects need to run.

The macro is anything but. Gas prices, tariff inflation, and the Iran conflict are doing real damage to consumers who want to spend. The consumer who has to spend — the one with a brown lawn, a pest problem, or an HVAC unit that quit in an April heat wave — will.

The weather sets up a better May than last year. Whether the macroeconomic headwinds let it matter is the question no forecast can answer.

Musical Coda

Source: NOAA CPC Official 30-Day Forecast issued April 16, 2026. NOAA nClimDiv state-level data 1895–2026. Store concentration based on estimated store counts by state. 30-year normal: 1991–2020 climatological baseline. Home Depot Q1 FY2025 and Lowe’s Q2 FY2025 earnings call transcripts.

© 2026 G2 Weather Intelligence™ / g2weather.com | All rights reserved.

Weather doesn't sneak up on you. It signals you — weeks and months in advance.

Most retailers still treat weather as something that happens to them. A bad quarter explained away on an earnings call. A miss attributed to an unseasonably warm October or a late spring. The forecast was wrong. The weather was unusual. Nothing to see here.

That’s not a weather problem; it’s a management problem opportunity.

Agentic AI and high-resolution modeling have made it possible to turn weather signals into a demand planning advantage — weeks before they show up in the register.

The technology exists. The margin opportunity is real. Most of the industry hasn’t yet moved in an integrated, enterprise-wide way.

That window won’t stay open long.

I sat down with Troy Siwek, General Manager of GreyOrange, on the In Store podcast to talk about what changes when retailers stop reacting to weather and start using it.

—Paul

The house started shaking before I understood what I was hearing.

It wasn’t the sound of a launch. I’d heard plenty of those. This was different — a low rumble that built into something physical, something you felt in your chest before your brain caught up. I looked out the window and saw it: a red mushroom cloud rising over Vandenberg, expanding upward and outward against the California sky.

Red meant nitrogen tetroxide. N2O4. One of the most toxic substances used in rocket propellant. And it was moving.

I was off duty. My wife was there. Our newborn son was there. And somewhere on base, the duty forecaster I had trained and certified was watching the same cloud and running the numbers on a Texas Instruments calculator — determining whether the toxic corridor was heading toward Lompoc, California, or out to sea.

It went west. Offshore. Lompoc was safe.

The forecast had called it. The launch was a go precisely because the toxic corridor model predicted the plume would…

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Last week, I laid out the tension defining Q1 retail: a historically strong weather signal colliding head-on with a macro headwind nobody asked for. Today, NOAA released the March data. The verdict is in — on both counts.

The weather delivered. The football moved again.

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I don't oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war.—Barack Obama

Signal Summary

• Macro headwinds are real: geopolitical tension and higher energy costs are acting as a short-term tax on discretionary spending

• Weather is quietly supportive: early, favorable spring conditions are pulling forward seasonal demand across the western half of the country

• Category split emerging: discretionary remains pressured, but weather-driven categories are stabilizing — and in some markets, accelerating

• Key takeaway: Q1 retail likely comes in soft — but less bad than expected, where weather exposure is high

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The February retail sales number dropped this morning — up 0.6%, ahead of the 0.5% consensus. Reuters cited warming temperatures as a contributing factor. They’re right. But the weather signal was visible weeks before the data.

WASHINGTON, April 1 (Reuters) - U.S. retail sales increased solidly in February as motor vehicle purchases rebounded and temperatures warmed up, but surging gasoline prices because ​of war in the Middle East could crimp spending ‌in the months ahead.

NOAA’s February statewide temperature rankings tell the story.

Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado all ranked 132nd warmest out of 132 years on record. Not just warm. Historically warm. The entire western half of the country ran much above average. Precipitation was suppressed across the same geography — dry conditions that keep consumers moving rather than stuck at home.

That combinat…

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“Sunshine came softly through my a-window today” —Donovan

The next evolution of G2 Weather Signal™ begins next month. More visual signal tracking, more forward context, and a cleaner way to see what matters. The chart below is an early look at what’s “in store.”

—Paul

Musical Coda

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Extreme heat is the leading cause of weather-related death in the United States. Not hurricanes. Not tornadoes. Heat. And this week, Southern California recorded March temperatures that rivaled the hottest on record.

Inland temperatures exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Overnight lows stayed in the 60s and 70s — so warm that the body never fully recovers. The National Weather Service issued an extreme heat warning for much of Los Angeles County through Friday. Climate scientist Daniel Swain described it simply as “a full-on summer heat wave in March.”

Communities haven’t had time to acclimate. The heat is arriving months earlier than typical. Seniors, outdoor workers, and coastal residents without air conditioning are at greatest risk.

That…

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• Spring arrived this week in the data before it arrived on the calendar. A broad heat wave is running across most of the country — the West and Southwest are 15–20°F above normal, the interior is accelerating, and even the Northeast has flipped positive YoY. For Q1, the weather environment is broadly improving heading into Easter.

• The forward signal holds through April. Above-normal temperatures are the base case across most regions for the full month. The one exception that matters: the Northeast, the country’s highest-revenue retail market, is forecast near-normal after a warm April last year — a softer setup than it looks on the surface.

• Precipitation is the variable to watch. Wet conditions in the Northeast this week are suppressing foot traffic despite the temperature recovery. The pre-Easter cold snap in the Southeast next week is the sharpest near-term adverse signal in the dataset — Charlotte, Atlanta, and Philadelphia all in the bottom five heading into the most important shopping weekend of the spring.

• The weather signal is as clean as it gets right now. But it needs to be read inside a fragile economic environment. The administration’s military escalation in Iran has pushed gas prices sharply higher and introduced a level of consumer uncertainty that the weather model doesn’t capture. Favorable weather is a necessary condition for spring demand — it is not a sufficient one when consumers are watching prices at the pump and questioning what comes next.

This week’s Flash Report covers three time scales: last week’s actuals (NRF Week 8), this week’s in-progress forecast (NRF Week 9 — the dominant signal for Q1), and next week’s pre-Easter outlook (NRF Week 10).

The extended NOAA Week 3-4 probability outlook and the full April monthly forecast — with year-over-year comparisons against April 2025 actuals — are included for subscribers, along with the company-level Q1 weather signal for Home Depot, Lowe’s, Costco, BJ’s Wholesale, Ross Stores, and Burlington.

The weather signal accounts for the weather environment. What it cannot account for is a consumer who is paying more than $4 at the pump and reading headlines about military engagement in the Middle East. Both things are true this week.

The signal is favorable. The backdrop is not.

Musical Coda

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AT A GLANCE

• Macy’s reported +1.8% comparable sales against negative guidance, with Bloomingdale’s posting its best holiday quarter on record at +9.9%

• Three distinct weather environments shaped the quarter: a Goldilocks Northeast December, an adverse but muted West Coast, and a January storm absorbed in silence

• The same storms that Kohl’s quantified at roughly $45 million in lost sales went unquantified at Macy’s — mentioned only when an analyst asked

• When you beat, you don’t mention the weather. When you miss, it becomes the narrative. That asymmetry is the signal.

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**A Note on the New Format**

This week’s G2 Weather Signal report looks different.

Here’s why —

I’ve spent 20+ years working alongside retailers, CPG companies, and restaurant operators across the US and Europe — close enough to understand how weather moves inventory, traffic, and margin in ways that never make it cleanly onto an earnings call.

That pattern recognition is the foundation of this product.

What’s new is the infrastructure behind it—I’m now working with Anthropic’s Claude to process and score company-level weather exposure across a full quarter, and partnering with WeatherMapping.com for granular market-level data alongside the full suite of amazing yet often (IMHO) underutilized data from NOAA and the National Weather Service.

Together, that gives the G2 Weather Signal report a data foundation and analytical throughput that wasn’t possible to build as a solo practitioner … until now.

This week captures exactly why that matters.

Blizzard warnings across the Upper Midwest, tornadoes bearing down on the Eastern US, record-breaking heat out West — three simultaneous weather regimes with three completely different implications for consumer spending, depending entirely on where a retailer’s stores sit. The same Monday. The same quarter. Very different earnings setups.

The G2 Weather Signal report is built to answer the question that earnings transcripts rarely answer directly: what did the weather actually do to this quarter, and what is it setting up for next?

**Premium subscribers** get the full company-level signal table — forecasted Q1 impact signal (updates weekly), grade, week-over-week change indicator, and the footprint narrative behind each score. That’s the earnings-prep intelligence: walking into a Home Depot or Walmart call with a view on whether weather was a tailwind or headwind, and in which geographies it mattered most.

**Founding Members** get everything above plus a full-year forward outlook at the company level — Q2, Q3, and Q4 signals built from seasonal probability forecasts and two decades of retail and restaurant pattern recognition. The tool for positioning ahead of earnings seasons, not reacting to them.

Paul Walsh

Founder, G2 Weather Intelligence

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“I also like Dicks’ quite a bit” —Steven Weiss

Back in November 2024, at the launch of G2 Weather Intelligence, I wrote a bullish post on Dick's Sporting Goods (DKS, NYSE). It was a bit cheeky — but it was also (oddly) the first post to generate subscribers. Nine of them, to be exact.

Here's the post —

Stephen Weiss likes DKS quite a bit … not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Back in the day, as the so-called “business and weather expert” on The Weather Channel, I was on CNBC relatively frequently.

Most of the time, it ended well.

But on one occasion, following an interview I did with the gang from Fast Money, the post-interview cross-talk resulted in a bit of awkwardness (and suppressed giggles) when Stephen Weiss commented that he likes Dick’s ... and quite a bit.

To be specific, he was referring to Dick’s Sporting Goods, aka NYSE:DKS.

This happened many years ago (and it still makes me giggle), but two things remain true:

• DKS is highly weather-impacted, and

• They’re VERY good at managing the impact of weather.

Like Stephen, I also like DKS quite a bit.

Their latest earnings beat is exactly why — a major late-January storm disrupted more than half their store base, cost an estimated $40 million in revenue, and never came up on the earnings call. They beat anyway. That’s what a well-executed weather strategy looks like.

But DKS was one of five retailers reporting this week, and the broader picture is more complicated. Some beat expectations handily. Some missed. The stock market sold off winners and losers alike — except for Dicks’ and Dollar General, which moved higher.

The market was telling you something.

Companies that can absorb an environmental headwind — whether it’s a January blizzard or a $100 oil shock — and execute anyway are exactly what investors want to own in this environment. Dicks’ and Dollar General proved that this week. The rest of the field didn’t.

Which brings us to the macro backdrop.

Q4 GDP was revised down to 0.7% — cut nearly in half from the prior estimate, and well below consensus. Core inflation was running at 3.1% in January. Those numbers were compiled before the US-Israel-Iran conflict began on February 28th — and before the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed in the weeks that followed.

This morning, Brent crude is hovering at $100 a barrel. Iran’s new supreme leader has vowed to keep the Strait closed as a tool of war. The U.S. Navy is not ready to escort commercial vessels through it. Twenty percent of the world’s daily oil supply is stranded.

The CFOs who guided cautiously this week weren’t being conservative. They were reading the same data we’re reading now.

In a world of maximum unpredictability, weather is the one variable that is predictable.

Investors and operators cannot predict when the Strait of Hormuz will reopen. They cannot predict where tariffs will land next quarter. They cannot predict whether the Fed pivots.

But they can know — with reasonable confidence — that a cold November activates soup occasions at Campbell’s, that a January storm drives Dollar General stock-up trips, that wet February weather suppresses Kohl’s traffic, and that Casey’s snow removal costs move in a measurable direction weeks in advance.

In an environment where edges are scarce, any variable that can be anticipated rather than merely reacted to carries real analytical value. Weather is that variable for retail and consumer packaged goods.

The G2 Weather Signal is not a prediction. It’s a benchmark.

This is the insight that matters most from this week’s calls.

The signal is a benchmark against which actual performance can be measured. A difficult weather environment is not a verdict on a company’s quarter. It’s a baseline. What management does with the hand they’re dealt is the measure of operator quality.

Dick’s Sporting Goods entered earnings week with a weak weather signal — a late-January storm disrupted operations across an estimated 56% of its legacy store base over a three-day window. And yet, Dick’s beat Wall Street’s revenue estimate by $160 million and delivered a +3.1% same-store sales increase on top of last year’s +6.6%.

Strip out the estimated storm drag, and the underlying business was running closer to a $200 million beat.

Kohl’s faced the same storm and missed. Management quantified the weather impact directly — approximately $40 million in lost revenue, with roughly 575 stores temporarily closed. The weather benchmark tells you not to over-penalize Kohl’s for a headwind they absorbed and disclosed transparently.

Same storm. Two companies. Two different operator quality signals — visible only because the benchmark exists.

Why the benchmark is invisible without the framework.

Of the five companies reporting this week, only one never mentioned weather at all — Dick’s Sporting Goods, which absorbed an estimated $40 million storm headwind and beat anyway(!).

At every other company, weather surfaced in some form.

Dollar General’s CEO credited winter storm stock-up for January’s strength. Kohl’s CFO quantified the storm impact directly — roughly $40 million in lost revenue, 575 stores temporarily closed. Casey’s flagged snow removal costs. Campbell’s cited bakery distribution disruption. But the connection between cold weather and Meals & Beverages outperformance — Rao’s sauce, Pacific broth, condensed cooking ingredients all running ahead — never came up.

The revenue-driving weather signal, positive or negative, went unattributed at every company except Dollar General. And even there, the CEO’s candor was the exception, not the rule.

Dick’s Sporting Goods’ traffic declined 1.3% in the quarter. An analyst asked directly about the deceleration. Management cited a difficult prior-year comparison. The storm that disrupted more than half their store base in the final week of the quarter was not mentioned.

This is not negligence. It is rational institutional behavior. Once a management team cites weather as a headwind, they implicitly commit to discussing it every quarter. Weather explanations carry reputational baggage from years of abuse by teams using them to excuse poor performance. And when a quarter beats, there is no pressure to explain any component of underperformance.

The silence isn’t accidental. It’s structural. And structural silence is where durable information asymmetry lives.

The analytical edge belongs to those who can see what management won’t say.

That’s what G2 Weather Signal™ is built to surface.

Video Coda

Full signal grades, company-by-company analysis, and the one-storm-three-format breakdown are below for Premium and Founder subscribers.

Kohl’s, Casey’s General Stores, Campbell’s, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and Dollar General — all five calls, annotated.

— Paul

PREMIUM — Signal Scorecard & Company Analysis

The Signal Scorecard

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There’s a pattern I’ve noticed over years of watching retail earnings calls.

When the weather hurts a company’s results, executives talk about it — they quantify it, explain exactly what it cost them, and use it as honest context for a disappointing quarter.

When the weather helps, the same executives take credit for the results and attribute the performance to strategy, execution, and operational discipline. The weather sensitivity doesn’t change. The communication strategy does.

Burlington Stores is actually one of the best weather operators in retail — they understand their exposure, they position their inventory accordingly, and they execute against it better than most. That’s exactly what makes them the right company to illustrate the pattern.

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"Stupid is as stupid does." —Forrest Gump

Why the Weather Signal Matters More Right Now

G2 Weather Signal launched in late 2025 with a simple premise: weather is the most systematically underreported variable in retail and restaurant earnings. Twelve weeks in, the framework has validated itself across two earnings seasons, seven retailers, and a growing watchlist of companies whose results move predictably with regional weather patterns.

This morning, that premise is more relevant than ever.

U.S. oil prices vaulted above $100 a barrel Sunday for the first time since the fallout of Russia’s war on Ukraine — the direct result of the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz following U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran. Tanker traffic has slowed to a trickle. Qatar has halted a fifth of global LNG supply after a drone strike on its Ras Laffan complex. JPMorgan estimates daily regional output could fall by more than 4 million barrels if the strait remains closed by Friday, reaching 9 million by the end of March.

One week in, this is shaping up as the most severe shock to energy markets since the 1970s.

Higher gasoline prices hit the discretionary consumer first and hardest. The same shopper that retail and restaurant companies depend on is now facing a rapidly compressing budget at the pump — before inflation, before tariff pass-through, before any of the other macro headwinds already in the forecast.

In that environment, the margin for weather-driven demand variance narrows. The companies best positioned are those whose geographic footprints align with favorable weather conditions and whose customer bases are most insulated from energy cost pressures.

In this environment, the G2 Weather Signal framework has never been more relevant — and today's format evolution reflects what the signal has become.

The free tier remains what it always was — the framework, the regional data, the sector-level read on what the weather did and why it matters.

What’s new is what sits behind it: a rolling current quarter (Q1/2026) weather signal for every company on the G2 Weather watchlist, updated every Monday, with a numeric index, a letter grade, and a week-over-week delta that shows whether the signal is improving or deteriorating heading into earnings.

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Get full access to the Q1 2026 rolling signal — already ten weeks in and updating weekly through April. The cold snap arriving next week is the next meaningful risk event before Q1 closes on April 4. Don’t read about it after earnings.

This Week’s Signal Summary

• False Spring, Then Cold Snap. The Northeast closes its prior year gap this week for the first time in three weeks. Then next week the cold rotation arrives — Northeast, Ohio Valley, and Upper Midwest enter simultaneous suppression in the same week. The sequence is the signal.

• Warm Belt Holding — But Prior Year Comparisons Tightening. South and Southeast continue to run well above normal through both weeks. The problem is the lap. Absolute warmth is real. Beating last year in the warm belt is harder than the temperature alone suggests.

• Late March Recovery Clears the Cold Snap. NOAA Week 3-4 shows above-normal temperatures reasserting nationally through April 3. No below-normal signal anywhere in the continental U.S. The cold snap week ending March 21 is a one-week event, not a sustained pattern.

• Q1 Rolling Signal Now Live. Eight companies graded across Home Improvement, Off-Price, and Apparel. The spread between the strongest and weakest signal in the peer group is the widest it has been all quarter. Company-level grades and index values are available to Premium subscribers below.

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Last Week — Week Ending March 7. 2026 / NRF March Week 1

Most of the country ran well above normal last week.

The South hit +17°F, Southeast +13°F, Ohio Valley +11°F. Spring arrived early across the warm belt. But the Northeast — the region with the highest concentration of publicly traded retail and restaurant exposure — came in at just +1°F vs normal and -8°F vs the same week last year.

Retailers were lapping a warm week in 2025. That prior year gap is the number that matters.

Top Weather Impact Stories Last Week

• Northeast prior year gap is the story. +1°F vs normal sounds neutral. -8°F vs prior year is a meaningful headwind for brands with heavy Northeast concentration lapping a warm week in 2025.

• Warm belt pulled spring demand forward. South and Southeast at +17°F and +13°F activated early-season categories — transitional apparel, outdoor, home and garden — two to three weeks ahead of normal.

• Ohio Valley warm but wet. +11°F drove demand intent but +1.0 inch above normal precipitation suppressed destination traffic in one of the highest-density retail corridors in the country.

• Off-price Sunbelt geography was the cleanest tailwind. Warm, dry conditions across the South and Southeast drove clean traffic lift with no execution drag.

• Limited service restaurants continued to underperform. Northeast near-normal temperatures with a significant prior year cold gap extended the foot traffic suppression pattern that showed up in the Fiserv February data (-1.8% YoY nationally for limited service).

Sector Impacts

• 🔥🔥 Off-Price — Warm and dry across the South and Southeast. Clean demand tailwind in the core geographic stronghold. No meaningful precipitation drag. Strongest sector signal of the week.

• 🔥🔥 Home & Garden — South and Southeast warmth opens the outdoor project and early garden window. Ohio Valley warm but wet creates mixed execution in that corridor.

• 🔥 Apparel & Footwear — Transitional product activating early in the warm belt. Northeast near-normal temperatures with a -8°F prior year gap is a quiet headwind for brands with heavy Northeast concentration.

• 🔥 Specialty Retail — Outdoor, footwear, and seasonal categories activating broadly across the warm belt. Cleanest lift for South and Southeast-concentrated footprints.

• 🔥 Dollar/Value — High South and Southeast concentration with no meaningful wet-market drag. Demand tailwind with clean execution conditions.

• ⚠️ Casual Dining / Full Service — Warm demand signal present across the South and Southeast. Ohio Valley and Upper Midwest wet conditions suppress destination traffic in those markets. Patio season opening early in the warm belt is the offset.

• ⚠️ QSR / Limited Service — Warmth drives frequency in the South and Southeast. Northeast prior year gap extends the foot traffic suppression pattern from February. Delivery-capable concepts best positioned to absorb execution friction in the Ohio Valley.

• ⚠️ Grocery — Weather-resilient sector but basket composition diverging sharply by region. Warm belt transitioning away from cold-weather staples while Northeast stays in winter mode for another week.

Musical Coda … “For no particular reason”

Forward Signal

This week the Northeast finally recovers. +4°F vs normal, +4°F vs prior year — the first week in three the region isn’t running cold against last year. The warm belt holds across the South and Southeast. The West and Southwest accelerate. The Ohio Valley stays warm but wet at +1.1 inches above normal. A broadly favorable demand week with execution friction concentrated in the Ohio Valley and a cold, very wet Northwest.

Then next week the cold rotation arrives.

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This morning, the Commerce Department reported that retail sales fell 0.2% in January — the biggest monthly decline since May — below economists' expectations of flat, with department store sales leading the decline at -6%. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that February payrolls fell by 92,000, nearly double the estimates.

Both agencies cited the same culprit: severe winter weather. The storms were real. The disruption was real. But the primary story of this retail earnings season is not the January storms.

It’s what happened before them.

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“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool." — Richard Feynman

Ross Stores (ROST) and Target (TGT) reported on Tuesday. Before we look ahead to Thursday, here’s how the weather signal performed and what we’re adjusting.

Ross Stores (ROST) | Q4 Signal: D- (12/100) | Significant Headwind

The G2 signal flagged ROST as the most weather-exposed retailer heading into Q4. The signal was mostly wrong — and the transcript told us exactly why.

ROST posted a +9% comp on $6.64 billion in revenue, beating Street expectations by roughly $260 million. Management confirmed that weather cost them approximately $66 million in revenue — about 100 basis points of comp — but the culprit was January storm traffic suppression, not the California warmth the signal emphasized. Outerwear was called out as one of the strongest categories of the quarter.

The model overweighted California rain as a traffic and demand suppressor. It underweighted d…

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“It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want - oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!” —Mark Twain

Signal Summary

• Signal Summary

  • Pattern Reversal: The NOAA 6-10 day outlook shows 90-100% probability of above-normal temperatures across the entire eastern U.S. — South, Southeast, Ohio Valley, and Upper Midwest, all running at maximum confidence. Home improvement, farm supply, and outdoor specialty are the first movers.

  • Northeast Cabin Fever: Modest warming understates the signal. After a historic blizzard and an extended cold winter, the Northeast consumer is ready to leave the house. Apparel, footwear, and casual dining are the primary beneficiaries.

  • Ohio Valley Precipitation Watch: The warmth comes with an execution headwind — +2.7” above normal in the Ohio Valley, +1.6” in the Upper Midwest. Delivery-capable QSR absorbs this better than destination formats.

  • Spring Acceleration: Next week sustains warmth across the South, Southeast, and West. The West YoY flips positive for the first time in months — the forward signal for off-price apparel and drive-through concepts with California concentration.

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Last Week Actual — Week Ending February 28, 2026

Geographic bifurcation defined last week. West and South ran warm and dry — Southwest at +12.5°F, West +8.2°F, South +6.4°F — delivering the first clean spring conditions for California and Sun Belt retailers. The Northeast bore the full weight of Hernando. Ohio Valley and Upper Midwest YoY comparisons were the most negative in the dataset — both running more than 12°F colder than the prior year — reflecting a dramatically different weather setup retailers are lapping in Q1.

Note: Northeast -3.5°F reflects the full week. Hernando struck February 22-24 — temperatures recovered through the back half of the week.

Weather Data Source: Weathermapping.com

This Week — Week Ending March 7, 2026

The country warms broadly and aggressively. The South hits +16.9°F — the hottest reading in the dataset. Southeast +11.2°F, Ohio Valley +11.6°F, Upper Midwest +9.6°F. This is not a gradual transition. Spring opened simultaneously across virtually every retail geography this week.

The friction point is interior precipitation. Ohio Valley +2.7” above normal, Upper Midwest +1.6”. Warm and wet weather activates demand but suppresses traffic. The South and Southeast get the warmth without the wet. Ohio Valley and Upper Midwest-heavy footprints get the warmth with a traffic drag attached.

Sector Impacts:

• 🔥 Home Improvement — Warm and dry South/Southeast opens the outdoor project window. Strongest signal of the week.

• 🔥 Farm & Ranch — Spring activation compressed into TSCO’s most important month. South and Southeast warmth triggers simultaneous category demand.

• 🔥 Specialty Retail — Apparel, footwear, and outdoor categories activate broadly. Cleanest lift for South and Southeast-concentrated footprints.

• 🔥 Dollar/Value — High South and Southeast concentration with no meaningful wet-market drag. Clean demand tailwind.

• 🔥 QSR/Fast Casual — Warmth drives dining frequency. Delivery-capable concepts are best positioned to absorb the friction from Ohio Valley and Upper Midwest precipitation.

• ⚠️ Casual Dining — Warm demand signal present, but Ohio Valley and Upper Midwest wet conditions suppress destination traffic in those markets.

• ⚠️ Mass Merchants — Broad demand lift but execution varies sharply by geographic footprint. Northeast and Ohio Valley wet conditions drag on warehouse-format traffic.

Data Source: Weathermapping.com

Top 3 — Structural Conviction (Bullish)

I screen our full 76-company coverage universe each week. These are my highest conviction calls — the intersection of signal strength, geographic alignment, format amplification, and differentiation from what the Street is already pricing in.

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Ross Stores and Target both report Q4 earnings on Tuesday, the critical holiday quarter. Here's what the weather data says about each, and why the Street may have them backwards.

The Signal Summary

• Ross Stores (ROST — Nasdaq): 12/100 | D- | Severe headwind

  • California and the West — 28% of Ross's store base — faced record warmth and above-normal precipitation for the entire quarter. For an off-mall seasonal apparel retailer, warm weather kills demand, and rain kills foot traffic. California delivered both in Q4.

• Target (TGT — NYSE): 63/100 | B | Meaningful tailwind

  • A cold Northeast December in Target's largest region activated seasonal apparel demand and pre-storm grocery runs simultaneously during peak holiday. Cold weather and storm threats are bullish for Target's format in a way that they cannot be for Ross. The Street is cautious heading in. The weather signal says they shouldn't be.

• The Asymmetry

  • Here's the thing — the Street is most bullish on the retailer with the

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The market delivered a strange verdict this week.

Lowe’s crushed Q4 performance—posting a +1.3% comp versus Home Depot’s +0.3%, capturing over $100 million in storm-driven sales, and demonstrating strong underlying execution.

The stock dropped 4%.

Home Depot posted modest results, characterized weather as neutral, and beat on execution without fanfare. The stock rallied 3% and held its gains.

What gives?

The answer lies in a simple truth: investors don’t pay for what you did yesterday. They pay for what you’ll do tomorrow.

And when it comes to Q1 (aka Spring), the market chose Home Depot.

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