"Consumer confidence, which had rebounded strongly in late spring, has faded in the last two months," Lynn Franco, director of the Conference Board Consumer Research Center, said in a statement.

Then comes the spring, with the explosiveness of longer days and songbirds returning to the willows along the Clark Fork River, which flows through the center of town, east to west.

The La Nina weather anomaly will persist into the spring of 2009 but should gradually weaken during that period, the U.S. Climate Prediction Center said on Thursday.