It's not intuitive, but since building sites must halt work during strong winter days, a large increase in the number of 'snow days' has an outsize effect on th

It's not intuitive, but since building sites must halt work during strong winter days, a large increase in the number of 'snow days' has an outsize effect on the total output of the construction sector --one of the largest sectors of the US economy-- during Q1. This past winter was peculiar in that regard because not only there were more snowstorms overall than the previous year, but also there were major snowstorms in regions that seldom see that kind of weather like the South. And it shows in the figures for residential and commercial building during the quarter. These seasonalities however are well understood and don't matter nearly as much, in part because construction companies often catch up on their delayed projects during the subsequent quarter. This is one the reasons why reading too much into annualized quarterly fluctuations can be misleading at times [1]. [1] http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/whoa-whassup-with-that-big-negative-q1-gdp-revision/ http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/whoa-whassup-with-that-big-neg...