Are you thinking about moving to St Louis, but worried about all those tornadoes? Here’s the real scoop on St Louis, all four seasons, what to expect and how to prepare it. Hi there, my name is Johanna Dueren and I’m a realtor with Circa Properties here in beautiful St Louis, Missouri. Today we are talking truth about St Louis weather and even debunking a couple myths.
St Louis does have a full four seasons, and I will tell you some seasons are a little friendlier than others. Let’s start with winter since that’s what we are living through right now. Winter in St Louis can be kind of a roller coaster of emotions, especially for people like me that hate winter. What to expect in winters in St Louis, generally, the temperatures are going to be somewhere between the lows being in the twenties to mostly mid to upper forties. Do we get snow? Yes, we do get snow. It’ll snow multiple times in the winter. You may only get one or two times when it actually accumulates to something more than three or four inches. The rest of the time, it’s just going to be a little dusting of snow.
The real fun in the winter comes when we get to experience, mother nature’s multiple personalities. There are usually two or three warm ups that happen sometimes starting in late January, that go all the way to late February, where suddenly it will be 60 to 70 degrees and sunny and everybody thinks that spring is finally here. It is a mean, mean mother nature trick though, because usually the next week, we’re right back down into the twenties.
How do you prepare for winter in St Louis? Well, if you’re somebody like me, like I said, that hates winter, you have to kind of check your emotions at the door. You just know that you’re going into it, it’s going to be cold, it’s going to be gray and it’s going to suck. A couple other things to do to prepare for winter, get the snow shovels ready. You will need them at least a couple of times. Go ahead and get the salt ready. It’s not ever going to be crazy like you’re going to be snowed in your house for multiple days. We do get those snows every once in a while, but they’re few and far between. So get the snow shovels ready, go ahead and leave a pair of shorts out though, for those random 60 and 70 degree days, right in the middle of January and February. You want to make sure that you’re out of the park like everybody else, pretending that it’s summer finally.
You will also want to make sure that you have a sled ready to go. One of the funnest parts of St Louis after a good snow is heading to forest park and hitting Art Hill. And as you are screaming down Art Hill on your sled, headed towards Post-Dispatch Lake, don’t worry, the park people usually put up bales of hay, right at the bottom of the hill to prevent all of us from heading right into the lake.
No St Louis winter or snow event is complete without mention of St Louisans and totally freaking out and everybody hitting the grocery store to stock up on milk, bread and eggs. I’m not sure why. Usually we also hit the grocery store, but we’re looking more for potato chips and wine. However you plan to spend your St Louis snow days, just sit back and relax, because it is beautiful when it comes down.
Moving on to spring in St Louis, what to expect in the spring. You will usually see temperatures ranging all over the place, really in the spring. They’re going to start in the low thirties and end up somewhere in the mid to upper seventies, depending on what time of spring we are in. Spring in St Louis is absolutely beautiful. When things start to bloom, usually beginning to middle of April, the Redbuds start blooming, the dogwoods start blooming. You’ve got two lips and daffodils popping up everywhere. It’s a ton of color.
The other thing to expect in St Louis during the spring is a ton of rain. It’ll start raining in March, it goes on and off all the way through June and the ground here gets really wet. That’s really when St Louis basements take the biggest hit, big storms roll through. This brings up one of the biggest questions that I get from a lot of out-of-town clients about tornadoes in St. Louis. Are there tornadoes that roll through here every other weekend? And the answer is no.
We, especially in St Louis city and St Louis County, I believe because we are in a warmer part as you get closer to the cities, everything warms up a little bit with the houses and concrete. We don’t get as many tornadoes rolling through here. Do they happen in Missouri? Yes, they do happen. Mostly in the rural areas. But because of the way the science works, and if somebody out there is a scientist that can explain it a little bit better to me, my understanding is because of the heat part of the cities, they tend to stay away from the cities and counties a little bit more.
So how do you prepare for spring in St Louis? Well, get some rain boots, because it’s going to be a little mucky. Also, as far as your house goes, you’re going to want to make sure that your gutters are cleaned out because when the rain starts coming down, you want all that water diverted to where it needs to go. If you have a problem with a basement that takes on water, definitely talk to a waterproofer. There are some really good ones that can talk about installing a sump pump, installing French drains, any way to divert the water away from your basement, because spring and parts of summer in St Louis, our wooden basements are going to be hardest hit.
Moving on to my favorite season, summer. Summer in St. Louis gets really hot. I will be honest. We have a special type of heat here in St Louis that is paired with a special type of humidity that can make you feel like you are kind of swimming through a fish tank when you’re just on the way from your house to the car. Temperatures in St. Louis in the summer are going to be on the low end in the seventies. Usually they’re going to be in the upper eighties to nineties. And very often in the middle of summer, we will get up over a hundred degrees for several days.
And as people in St Louis say, it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity. It gets very, very humid. So really I’m not joking with walking out the front door and you can feel the humidity hit you like a ton of bricks, and you are instantly soaked. How to prepare for a St. Louis summer. Well, every year we’ll have our HVAC guy come to the house and prep the AC. The last thing you want is to have it be a 92 degree day, and all of a sudden, your AC craps out on you. Your HVAC person can come every year, do an annual cleaning and inspection, and just make sure that everything’s going to run really smoothly before it gets really hot.
I have a couple of friends that are from Chicago, and if you are super heat sensitive, like he is, he just doesn’t come out all summer long. He’ll just stay inside in the air conditioning. But for the most part, other ways to prepare, and it actually enjoys St Louis summer is to spend some time at the pool, have a pool installed in your own home. Spend some time at the lake, get out and spend some time in some water to cool off.
Last but not least is St Louis fall. Fall in St Louis and in Missouri in general is just beautiful. Temperatures are going to be mostly in the low, anywhere from the low fifties to mid sixties, as a low all the way up to sometimes they’re going to be more in the eighties, closer to summer temperatures. The fall weather usually doesn’t really kick in here until around October. It starts to cool off a little bit more towards the middle to the end of October. And when everything starts to cool off in that October time frame all the way through November, the leaves are spectacular. It is absolutely beautiful.
How to prepare for fall in St Louis? Best thing to do is to get yourself a fire pit and some pumpkin spice something. The evenings will be absolutely beautiful, a great time to sit outside and enjoy each other’s company. It’s also a great time just to go on a road trip and travel around Missouri and check out all the leaves. It’s also a really good time for people like me that hate winter, to mentally prepare themselves for what is about to approach.
Thanks so much for watching, and I would love to hear your stories about St Louis weather. Please comment like and subscribe down below. And if you want to learn more about St Louis, I’ve got plenty of other videos where right over here for you to take a look at. Thanks!
