Weather Trends International Warns of the Worst April in 22 years for Retailers - Bears lurking on Wall Street!

BETHLEHEM, PA (MAY 9, 2007): Weather Trends International warns that April retail same-store sales are expected to be in negative territory when results are announced on Thursday; this has only happened twice in 22+ years! The legitimate culprit is the weather as it was the coldest April in 10 years, wettest in four, snowiest in over 14 years and the worst Easter weather in 12 years. Near record high gasoline prices only added fuel to the fire making this an April most retailers will want to forget and a very disappointing end to Q1 2007. "While the April retail news will be very grim, it will also weigh down quarterly earnings which will likely create some anxiety on Wall Street over the next few weeks" said Bill Kirk, CEO Weather Trends International. The worst April gains on record were +0.3% back in 1988 and the worst gains for any month were in March 1995 at -0.8% and expectations are for a -1% industry year-over-year loss - worst ever. Regionally, the Northeast and the Central U.S. had the most extreme weather with snowfall trending up 788% over last year in the Northeast and up 917% in the North Central U.S. The Southwest was the only region to trend drier than a year ago - a slight positive for store traffic and retail sales. "The very poor April numbers will also weigh down the quarterly results (Feb-Apr) which is not surprising since an assessment of the past 22 years of retail sales data shows that a cold/wet quarter such as 2007 typically brings gains of 2.3% or less and Q1 2007 will be very near that around +2.4%, weaker than last year's +4.0% gains". added Kirk. Warm and dry conditions in Q1 historically bring much stronger gains of +5.1% on average (see table below). So goes the weather, so go retail sales in Q1!

The Top 10 Weather Negatives for April:

1. Coldest April in 10 years for the nation as a whole.

2. Snowiest April in 14+ years for the nation as a whole.

3. Worst Easter Weather in 12 years.

4. Wettest April in four years for the nation as a whole.

5. Biggest April blizzard in the Pocono's/New York April 16th with 12-20" of snow.

6. 30" of snow Easter weekend in the Great Lakes East of Cleveland.

7. New York City 2nd wettest April in over 125 years (13.05").

8. Latest freeze in history in the Deep South - millions in crop losses.

9. Latest snowfall in 69 years in Dallas.

10. Latest freeze in history for Jacksonville, Florida.


Weather Trends International is a leader of actionable business weather intelligence for retailers, manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, agricultural firms and financial analysts whose product's sales or business performance is impacted by the frequent changes in year-over-year weather conditions. Clients include Wal-Mart, ASDA, Kohl’s, Bon-Ton, Gander Mountain, Sherwin Williams, Johnson & Johnson, Anheuser-Busch, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup among others. Its weather solutions and understanding of how consumers respond to the weather is used throughout organizations to help "manage the weather risk” by timing and planning key marketing, advertising, markdowns, and inventory allocation decisions around favorable weather opportunities. Utilizing technology first developed in the early 1990s, Weather Trends International’s unique statistical and math based forecasting methodology projects temperature, precipitation and snowfall trends by week, 1-5 years into the future for 3,931 cities in 129 countries.