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Winter is the driest season, averaging about 6.7 inches of total precipitation. Average annual snowfall is 19.8 inches per year. Spring (March through May), is typically the wettest season, with approximately 10.8 inches of precipitation. Dry spells lasting one or two weeks are common during the growing seasons.

St. Louis (English /se?nt `lu??s/, French /s?~ lwi/) is an independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It is bordered by the Mississippi River on the east and by St. Louis County on the N, south, and west. St. Louis is the largest metropolitan area in Missouri, and the second largest in Illinois after Chicago. Sometimes written as Saint Louis, the city is named for King Louis IX of France. St. Louis is known for its French and German heritage and Victorian past. Two events at the beginning of the twentieth century, the 1904 World`s Fair and 1904 Olympic Games (the first ever held in the US) are of particular pride to St. Louisans. In the 21st century, St. Louis has transformed from a manufacturing and industrial economy into a globally known focus for research in medicine, Biotechnologynology, and other sciences.[citation needed]The city has many nicknames, the most popular being "Gateway City", as it is seen as the Eastern/Western US dividing mark. St. Louis is also called "Gateway to the West" on behalf the many people who moved west through St. Louis via the Missouri River (first leg of the Oregon Trail) and other wagon trails. St. Louis is also called "Mound City". This term originated with the Native US burial mounds that once were common in the city. These were largely annihilated to level the ground as the citified area grew. The city has several modern names such as "The Lou", "St. Louie", "The Western-Most Eastern City", "River City", or "The 314" (reference to the area code for St. Louis center). The most popular abbreviation for St. Louis is the "STL" in reference to the airfield code for the city and the long-standing use of an interlocked S, T, and L by the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team (the St. Louis Browns also used an interlocked STL).The City of St. Louis lies at the heart of Greater St. Louis, a sprawling region which includes parts of both Missouri and Illinois. The St. Louis MO-IL MSA was the 18th largest metropolitan area in the U.S. with 2,801,033 people as of the July 2006 US Census estimate.

In 1763, Pierre Laclède, his 13-year-old "stepson" Auguste Chouteau, and a small band of men traveled up the Mississippi from New Orleans to found a post to take advantage of trade coming downstream by the Missouri River. In Nov, they landed a few miles downstream of the river`s confluence with the Missouri River at a site where wooded limestone bluffs rose forty feet above the river. The men returned to Fort de Chartres for the winter, but in February, Laclede sent Chouteau and thirty men to begin construction, laid out in a grid pattern as an imitation of New Orleans. St. Louis was a river city, and it therefore developed in response to its relationship to the river. Development, particularly economic development, clustered around the settlement’s Mississippi River bank on what was called "the levee" and is now called "the landing." This long, smooth bank of land, which would later be paved with cobblestone, sloped into the river at an incline that was gradual enough to permit the river vessels of the time to beach onto it in order to be unloaded and loaded. All products at this time were shipped to and from New Orleans, orienting St. Louis` 18th-century trade N-south.

The settlement began to grow rapidly after word arrived that the 1763 Treaty of Paris had given Britain all the land east of the Mississippi. Frenchmen who had settled to the river`s east moved across the water to "Laclede`s Village." Other early settlements were established nearby at Saint Charles, the independent village of Carondelet (later annexed by St. Louis and now the southernmost part of the current City), Fleurissant (renamed Saint Ferdinand by the Spaniards and now Florissant), and Portage des Sioux. In 1765, St. Louis was made the capital of Upper Louisiana.

St. Louis was acquired from France by the US under President Thomas Jefferson in 1803, as part of the Louisiana Purchase. The transfer of power from Spain was made official in a ceremony called "Three Flags Day." On March 8, 1804, the Spanish flag was lowered and the French one raised. On March 10, the French flag was replaced by the US flag. French continued, along with English, to be one of the major spoken and written languages in St. Louis until the 1820s.

St. Louis first became legally incorporated as a town on Nov 9, 1809, though it elected its first municipal legislators (called trustees) in 1808.