It was T.S. Eliot who once declared that “April is the cruelest month.” While he cited ”breeding lilacs out of dead land” and “stirring dull roots with spring rain,” as reason for this characterization, this year, Eliot’s right for another reason: earnings season. According to a bevy of market analysts, the reporting period for the first quarter of 2015 — which officially kicks off when Alcoa AA +1.79% reports its results after Wednesday’s closing bell – could be quite cruel to investors over the following weeks, thanks in no small part to a lagging energy sector and surging dollar.

“Overall earnings in the first quarter are going to be terrible,” BTIG analyst Dan Greenhaus stated bluntly in a research note early in the week. “The consensus currently expects earnings to decline nearly 6% from one year ago; this would be the first negative quarter since 2012 and the worst since 2009.”

Other analyst estimates aren’t quite as dour as Greenhaus’: the Thomson Reuters consensus is calling for a 2.8% year-over-year decline, while S&P Capital IQ is projecting a 3% drop. (These estimates shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention to analyst reports over the last three months: since December 31, earnings estimates have fallen 8.2%.)

It’s not just the bottom-line that looks bad; top-line estimates are projecting declines, as well. S&P Capital IQ is projecting a 1.2% fall in first quarter revenue, LPL Financial is projecting a 2.3% decline while BTIG Research is forecasting a 3% drop in overall revenue results.

The two biggest culprits behind the projected declines are the price of oil and the strength of the U.S. dollar: the price of WTI crude averaged $48.21 for the first three months of 2015 compared to $100.50 in the first three months of 2014, a more-than 50% decline. This plunge in price means that energy sector companies have slashed their earnings guidance by 60%; according to Greenhaus, overall earnings would rise 2% if you were to exclude the energy sector from the overall results.

Meanwhile, the U.S. dollar index averaged $96.14 during the first quarter of the year compared to $80.33 for the same period in 2014 — a 20% year-over-year jump. While this is a great thing for Americans looking to travel or a U.S. company with little to no foreign sales, it’s bad news for a large portion of the S&P.

“The S&P 500 derives about 40% of sales from overseas, therefore relying heavily on global strength,” Christine Short, an analyst at Estimize, explained in a research note. Of the 19 companies who released their first quarter results a bit before the official start of earnings season, nearly every single one mentioned currency as a headwind; notable names in this group of 19 included Monsanto MON -0.21%,FedEx FDX -0.34%, Oracle ORCL +0.54%, Adobe, Micron, Costco, General Mills, and AutoZone.

“These companies hail from a variety of sectors — materials, industrials, information technology, consumer staples, and consumer discretionary — proving that the impact will be broad based as almost all sectors will feel forex fluctuations to some degree, with the exception of telecommunications and utilities which are mostly domestically focused,” Short expained. But, she added, some “well-managed” companies have so far been able to hedge against the stronger dollar, with AutoZone and Adobe beating top and bottom-line estimates. “This season, beware of companies using the stronger dollar as a cover up for missed earnings,” she cautioned.

Now, it should be noted that the Q1 earnings season won’t be all bad news: many market analysts are predicting strong results from the consumer sectors, with S&P Capital IQ projecting 7.4% earnings growth and Estimize projecting a 15.4% surge.

“Lower energy prices for consumers are like a tax cut that should help support earnings for the consumer sectors,” wrote Burt White, LPL Financial’s CIO, and Jeffrey Buchbinder, an LPL market strategist, in a recent research note. “Lower fuel costs also help lower transportation costs, which may benefit railroads, airlines, and shipping logistics providers, though lower fuel surcharges may mitigate benefits.”

White and Buchbinder are also predicting to see, overall, “stellar cost management,” and believe that S&P profit margins probably held up well during the first quarter of the year. “Wage gains are the biggest component of the S&P 500 companies’ costs, and wage gains remain moderate at about 2% despite the drop in unemployment,” they noted.

Health care and financials are the other two sectors expected to post strong results, with S&P projecting 9% year-over-year earnings growth in the health care sector and a 10.9% increase in financials’ bottom lines.

Also painting a slightly prettier picture is the small cap space: the Russell 2000 outperformed the S&P 500 during the first quarter, posting a 4% return compared to the S&P’s meager 0.4% gain. What’s more, “in what may be the most significant surprise of the first quarter, the Russell 2000 energy sector was down 0.9%, while SPX energy was off a steeper 3.6%,” Citi Research analyst Scott Chronert wrote in a recent research note. As a result, Wall Street is projecting Russell 2000 Q1 earnings (ex-neg) to grow 3%.

Ultimately, predictions are just that: predictions. And for all the crying over oil, the dollar, and even bad winter weather, the actual results could end up looking much better than the projections look now.

“Even though the forecast for S&P 500 EPS in Q1 is expected to decline 3%, history shows that actual results have been two to four percentage points higher that initial estimates,” S&P Capital IQ analyst Sam Stovall wrote in a recent note. “As a result, there is still a possibility that EPS will rise, thereby delaying the start of an EPS recession.”