The Weather's Impact on Q3 / 2024 Retail Sales

A look back at Q3 with a look forward to the balance of holiday

Over the past few weeks, publicly traded retailers have shared third-quarter earnings results. With help from Gemini, I summarized (so you didn’t have to!) some of the commentaries and, where they were forthcoming, the financial impact of the weather on their results.

It’s just a sampling, but the numbers and financial impacts represent how I expected the weather to shape consumer demand, downstream sales, and earnings during the third quarter of the standard retail calendar (August - October).

The graph below shows the number of times weather and hurricanes were mentioned as helping or hurting the sampled retailers in the quarter. The blue shaded bars show the companies that provided estimates of the dollar impact of weather during the quarter.