More Proof That The Weather Slammed The Economy In Q1

It’s trendy to dismiss the notion that weather had a big impact this year, but… it just did.

Here’s another datapoint from Citi’s Steven Wieting:

Private reports showed national snowfall was 60% above the year-ago level in January 2011. As figures 3 shows, with effects lingering into February, this resulted in the largest reported weather-related disruption to labour input in 15 years. This minor, less-than-tragic natural disaster should be long forgotten for forward-looking financial markets which have discounted much worse recently in other countries. But early 2011 weather has had an effect on broader consumption and output measured over the whole first quarter. With it, we see real GDP growing just 2.4% in 1Q 2011.

Photo: Citi

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