What to do with a rain barrel in winter: drain it or keep it catching?

By The Downspout · Posted Nov 10, 2026 · 5 min read

It depends on your winter. Where hard freezes last for days, drain the barrel before the first one, leave the spigot open, disconnect it and store it indoors or upside down. Where winter is the rainy season and freezes are brief, keep it hooked up: clean it, check the screens and send the overflow away from the house.

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Picture the corner of your house where the downspout meets the barrel. Before the next storm, that barrel should be either working or put away. Which one depends on how long your cold lasts. Here is how to tell, and what to do either way.

Drain it or keep it? It depends on how cold your winter gets

Water grows by about 9% when it freezes. That is enough force to split a plastic barrel, especially a full one.^[1] So most rain barrel advice, written where winters are long and hard, says the same thing: empty and disconnect the barrel before the first hard freeze.^[1]^[2]^[3]

The ice that cracks barrels comes from a hard freeze: 28°F or colder for a long stretch.^[1] So the real question is whether your nights at 28°F come one at a time, between milder days, or many in a row.

The chart shows the two ends of that range. In Columbus, Ohio, nights at 28°F or colder come for about five months, and almost a month of days never get above freezing: drain the barrel. In Santa Rosa, California, they come for about seven weeks, and the days warm up: keep it catching.^[4]^[5]

To find your own dates, go to weather.gov and pick your local forecast office. Under "Climate and Past Weather", open "Past Observed Weather", choose "first/last dates" and enter 28°F.^[1] Somewhere in between? Go by how long your cold spells last. If it stays below freezing for days at a time, put the barrel away.

Where winters freeze hard: put it away

Drain it before your first hard freeze, and leave the spigot open.^[2]^[3]
Disconnect it from the downspout and the hose.^[6]
Clean it while it's empty. Hose out the leaves and sludge, and replace torn screens or leaky valves.^[1]
Store it in a shed or garage, or upside down outside, tied to a post so the wind can't take it.^[2]^[7]
Put the downspout back. If you cut it short for the barrel, reattach the piece you removed, and add an elbow at the bottom so water runs away from the house.^[2]^[6]

Hook the barrel up again after your last hard freeze in spring.^[1]

Where winter is the rainy season: keep it catching

In some places, like the San Francisco Bay Area, summers are long and dry and most of the year's rain falls in winter.^[8] If that's you, putting the barrel away means putting it away for the rain. Keep it hooked up instead, and do these before the first big storm.

Clean it out. Drain and scrub the barrel once a year.^[8] Do it now, while summer has left it nearly empty.
Clear the gutters. Falling leaves clog them.^[3] Clean the screen on the barrel's inlet after each storm.^[7]
Empty and check the first flush diverter, if you have one. It's a short pipe that catches the first, dirtiest water off the roof, then lets cleaner water on to the barrel. The first storm after a dry summer carries the most dirt.^[8] Here is how a barrel and diverter are set up.
Keep every opening screened, the overflow too. Mosquitoes breed in standing water and can get in through the overflow hole.^[6]
Plan where the overflow goes. In a wet winter, the barrel will likely overflow.^[8] Send it onto a lawn, a garden bed or a rain garden (a planted low spot that soaks up water), never toward the foundation, a driveway or a septic system.^[7] For how far is far enough, see how far downspouts should be from the house.

That last step matters most, because a barrel fills fast. If a quarter of a 1,200 square foot roof drains to one downspout, a 1 inch rain sends about 185 gallons down it. That fills more than three barrels.^[7] So in a big storm, most of the water goes out the overflow. Sent into the ground, it soaks in instead of running to the storm drain, which in most places carries it to a creek untreated.^[7]

What about a cold night? Our take: since a full barrel is the one most likely to crack, draw off a few gallons if a night at 28°F or colder is forecast.^[1]

If you keep it catching: use the water now, or save it?

An empty barrel has room for the next storm, so stormwater experts say to empty it between storms.^[3]^[7] But where summers are dry, winter rain is worth saving for spring and summer watering.^[8] You can do both, at different times of year.

Our take: through the stormy months, drain the barrel slowly onto planted ground a day or two after each storm, so the water soaks in and the barrel is ready again. As the storms thin out in spring, close the spigot and let it stay full. That barrel becomes your first summer watering. Standing water can breed mosquitoes in about a week, so keep every opening screened.^[7]^[3]

In Sonoma County

Keep it catching. About 83% of Santa Rosa's rain falls from November to March, so stop draining around March.^[9]
Screen it the way the local mosquito district asks. The Marin/Sonoma Mosquito and Vector Control District asks for 1/16 inch mesh under the lid and over the overflow. The district helps with mosquito problems at no added cost: (707) 285-2200.^[10]
Rebate: Santa Rosa Water offers a rainwater harvesting rebate. Get approval before you start any work: (707) 543-3985.^[11] Other utilities: see water rebates.
Is a bigger tank legal? See are rain barrels legal in California.

What it means for you

Look up your town's hard-freeze dates before you drain anything.
Before the next storm, clean the barrel and screens and point the overflow away from the house.
Want more than a barrel holds? Size a tank with the tank size calculator.