Black Friday Dollars Are Up. Foot Traffic and Units Aren’t — Weather Drives December Momentum
The 2025 shopper is buying less, spending smarter, and shifting demand to whoever aligns with value — and the weather.
Quick Summary
1. Early-winter cold hit nearly half of U.S. households this week, activating demand that promotions couldn’t.
The Northeast, Central, and East North Central regions ran 5–15°F below normal—enough to unlock need-based purchases in a highly selective consumer environment.
2. Value retailers and home centers gained the most from the weather-driven shift.
Winners include The Home Depot (HD), Lowe’s (LOW), Ross Stores (ROST), Burlington (BURL), TJX (TJX), Dollar General (DG), Walmart (WMT), and Costco (COST) as shoppers moved toward essentials and affordable warmth.
3. Next week’s colder-than-normal setup and cleaner YoY comps extend the momentum.
With cold persisting across population-dense regions, winter categories hold a clear demand tailwind heading into the final stretch before Christmas.
👉 The Shift That Set December in Motion
This week’s pattern reminded me of a moment from last winter: my grandson and I sliding down the hill in my backyard, Benji chasing us full throttle — proof that a small push can set the whole ride in motion.
This holiday season has the same feel.
The real story of this holiday season began long before Black Friday. It started in the second half of October, when temperatures broke sharply cooler year over year across key retail regions.
That early-season cold shift—one we anticipated—did something no promotion could: it made the season feel like the season. And the retailers positioned for that turn saw the impact immediately.
Early reporters like Gap (GPS), Ross Stores (ROST) and Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF) all beat expectations in ways that were too consistent to dismiss as luck. Their inventories were tight, their assortments were aligned to fall, and for the first time in months, the weather met the moment.
Demand didn’t suddenly appear; it was released.
What the October cold did:
Activated seasonal demand that had been dormant for weeks
Improved sell-through on fall categories without relying on deeper promotions
Created cleaner YoY comps after last year’s unusually warm fall
Pulled forward margin opportunities for retailers with disciplined planning
This wasn’t a blip. The colder YoY pattern that began in late October has continued into Q4 and is now shaping the first half of December. That continuity is especially important because the current consumer environment is defined by selectivity. Higher-income households remain steady, but lower-income shoppers are trading down, delaying purchases, and focusing almost exclusively on essential categories.
In this landscape, we’re seeing a familiar but sharper pattern:
Dollars up, units down
More cautious basket composition
Higher price sensitivity at the low end
A widening K-shaped divide
When units are under pressure, weather becomes a force multiplier. It channels spend into must-buy categories — and this year, those categories align directly with colder temperatures.
Retailers positioned to win in this setup:
The Home Depot (HD) and Lowe’s (LOW)
Heating, insulation, weatherproofing, and indoor project categories
Immediate, necessity-driven purchases
Dollar General (DG), Ross Stores (ROST), Burlington (BURL), TJX (TJX)
Affordable winter basics
Strong trade-down dynamics
Costco (COST) and Walmart (WMT)
Stock-up behavior when mobility tightens
Best Buy (BBY) and Williams-Sonoma (WSM)
Indoor lifestyle and home-comfort categories
Benefiting from early winter behaviors
The connective tissue here isn’t price or promotion. It’s relevance. When temperatures fall and stay there, category relevance snaps into place — and shoppers who have been cautious suddenly have reasons to act. Weather accelerates the decisions consumers were already inclined to make.
The comps also matter. Last year’s fall was unusually warm, suppressing early-season sales and leaving retailers with an easier comparison set for 2024. This year’s colder start gave retailers:
A stronger launch point for fall and winter categories
Improved YoY visibility
A multi-week tailwind rather than a one-off cold snap
As we look into mid-December, the key question for investors isn’t whether the consumer is healthy. It’s whether the consumer is being activated by weather in ways that fundamentally shift where dollars flow.
The signals so far say yes — and they’re favoring retailers with disciplined inventory, relevant seasonal exposure, and strong value propositions.
Friday Flash: This Week’s Signal / Next Week’s Setup
The Friday Flash exists for one purpose: to call out the weather that shaped the consumer this week. And this week, the signal was unmistakable.
Nearly half of all U.S. households (48%) — across the Northeast, Central, and East North Central regions — stepped into a meaningful early-winter cold snap, running 5–15°F below normal. That shift changed behavior in real time, unlocking need-based demand and amplifying the advantage for value retailers and home centers.
The biggest beneficiaries were those positioned for essentials, winter goods, and trade-down behavior:
The Home Depot (HD) and Lowe’s (LOW) — heating, weatherproofing, and winterization
Ross Stores (ROST), Burlington (BURL), TJX (TJX), Dollar General (DG) — affordable cold-weather basics
Walmart (WMT) and Costco (COST) — stock-up trips and larger winter baskets
Best Buy (BBY) — early lift in home-comfort and indoor-living categories
Next week keeps the signal intact.
Temperatures remain colder than normal across these same population-dense regions and flip materially colder year over year — a cleaner setup for winter category units and continued strength for home centers, mass retailers, and value apparel as we move deeper into December.
The full G2 Weather Signal™ Flash Report will be out Monday at 8 AM ET, covering last week’s conditions and the forward-looking trends that matter as we head into the final stretch before Christmas.
Subscribe now to get the report delivered straight to your inbox — free through the end of the year.
Sources:
RetailNext early-store-traffic data (BusinessWire / Yahoo Finance)
Holiday consumer and retail coverage from The Wall Street Journal and Yahoo Finance
Proprietary analysis from G2 Weather Intelligence™
Powered by data from WeatherMapping.com.
If you reference or cite this work, please attribute it to G2 Weather Intelligence™.
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