Weather Tailwinds and Tariff Headwinds: How a Cooler Fall Is Rebalancing Retail
Favorable fall temperatures and a calm hurricane season have restored seasonal demand — yet tariff uncertainty threatens to undo the atmosphere’s good work.
O hushed October morning mild, Thy leaves have ripened to the fall; To-morrow’s wind, if it be wild, Should waste them all. — Robert Frost
After a volatile 2024 defined by unseasonably warm conditions (the warmest in 130 years) and painful inventory markdowns, Fall 2025 is delivering the opposite.
Cooler-than-last-year temperatures across the Eastern U.S., combined with a quiet tropical season, are providing a critical weather-driven tailwind for corporate earnings heading into Q4.
This shift translates directly into financial value for Retail, CPG, and Apparel companies:
Higher Conversion: Shoppers are buying seasonal goods when they expect to use them.
Cleaner Inventory: Stronger sell-through means fewer end-of-season markdowns compared to 2024.
Stabilized Forecasts: Weather is, for now, acting as a predictable driver of demand.
🍂 The Transition to Seasonal Alignment (Q3 → Q4)
The period spanning late Q3 into early Q4 2025 marks a return to historical buying rhythms not seen in several years.
After 2024’s lingering warmth delayed seasonal demand by nearly a month, this year’s early cool-down is bringing consumers back into sync with the calendar.
September & October: Both months have run significantly cooler than 2024, with broad cooler-than-last-year readings across the Midwest and Eastern U.S.
In contrast, the same period last year was among the warmest early-fall stretches on record, suppressing cold-weather apparel sales and forcing markdowns before Halloween.
This year, cooler conditions have accelerated purchases of outerwear, denim, and other transitional apparel weeks ahead of last year’s pace.
Category Highlights:
Apparel & Footwear: Boots, denim, and outerwear are selling several weeks earlier than in 2024, improving inventory flow and gross margin.
Mass Retailers (CPG): Broader household categories are activated as consumers pivot toward heavier, seasonal goods — heating, weatherization, and comfort products.
Holiday Setup: The late-October and Halloween outlook is projected to be significantly colder than last year, setting up the best environment in years for full-price holiday sell-through across seasonal merchandise.
“Cool weather isn’t just seasonal — it’s strategic. It restores the rhythm between climate, consumer, and commerce.”
🧠 Research Spotlight: Temperature vs. Transaction
Decades of data — and new empirical evidence — confirm what I have long argued:
Temperature, not precipitation, is the macro weather variable driving consumer transactions.
In Here Comes the Sun: Fashion Goods Retailing Under Weather Fluctuations (Martínez-de-Albéniz & Belkaid, 2020), researchers found:
A +5 °C warm anomaly boosts summer-item sales by ~11% and cuts winter-item sales by ~9%.
Conversely, cooler-than-normal anomalies lift conversion for cold-weather categories (coats, sweaters, boots).
In other words:
When the weather aligns with the season, conversion rises and markdowns fall.
This year’s cooler fall is reversing last year’s pattern — creating a positive conversion environment for high-margin fall/winter categories and restoring balance between climate and inventory.
⚙️ Tariffs: The Wild Card for Q4 Earnings
Even as weather provides a tailwind, policy uncertainty is emerging as a counterforce.
The Exposure:
The same categories now benefiting from favorable weather — apparel, footwear, and home goods — are also highly exposed to potential import tariffs.
The Impact:
If new duties take effect before the holidays, higher landed costs could:
Pressure gross margins
Force price increases
Blunt the current weather-driven demand uplift
Weather is the tailwind this quarter — but regulatory turbulence could be the next headwind.
🌍 The G2 Weather Intelligence View
2024: Record warmth and active hurricanes created a perfect (sh*t) storm of markdowns and margin compression.
2025: Cooler temperatures and a quiet Atlantic are providing the opposite — a measurable weather dividend.
This year’s atmosphere is acting as a stabilizer: improving conversion, cleaning up inventory, and helping restore confidence across Retail, Apparel, and CPG.
For now, the weather is doing what the economy can’t —
Cooling costs, lifting demand, and helping retailers rediscover their seasonal rhythm.