Forget That Warm Weather Talk: U.S. Is About to Get Cold

By Brian K. Sullivan

The computer forecast models have taken a turn for the cold.
The prospects of a January thaw are dropping right off the map. Even the chances that the U.S. East Coast will hold on to some above-normal temperatures into the last week of the month are fading like cheap paint in the bright sun.
Instead of displaying the gold and orange of milder weather, the maps have turned blue across the Midwest, which may be the same color your lips will be when the temperature drops. For the East, the outlook is for seasonal readings, and given that it’s January, you can color those cold, too.
“The big story this week is that our expected January thaw next week has been obliterated, and that the models keep getting colder and colder in general,
starting next week through the end of January,” said Todd Crawford, a meteorologist with WSI in Andover, Massachusetts.
While it’s still just a prediction, the news cheered some natural gas traders wishing that cold would arrive and land in the right places. Gas for February delivery rose 9.9 percent to $3.233 per million British thermal units yesterday on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the biggest one-day gain in 11 months.

Cold Central

Teri Viswanath, director of commodities strategy at BNP Paribas SA in New York, likes to say that the best place for a good cold snap is in the central U.S. Chills running from Chicago to Dallas will do more for natural gas demand than in New England because the Midwest uses more gas.
Average temperatures across the upper Midwest, including Chicago, may sink 3 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit (about 2 to 3 Celsius) below normal from Jan. 24 to 28, said Matt Rogers, president of the Commodity Weather Group LLC in Bethesda, Maryland.
Demand for gas in the retreat of next week’s seasonal temperatures will be “substantial,” Rogers wrote in a note to clients yesterday. A high-pressure ridge in the atmosphere over Alaska will set up a trough that will funnel frigid Canadian air into the central U.S.
Some natural gas traders have been rooting for a cold February to undo a mild December and an up-and-down January.
Rogers said they may get their wish.
His latest seasonal outlook calls for February to vie for the title of cruelest month of this North American winter, perhaps rivaling last year, with its polar outbreaks, at times.
Rogers’ natural-gas weighted heating degree days value, a measure of demand, was 880.8 in February 2014. He is calling for the value to be 860 this year, compared with a five-year average of 801.8.
The good news for those who aren’t trading natural gas contracts and aren’t enjoying these temperatures: Spring is only a little more than nine weeks away.