This year has been a very cold and snowy year for just about everyone spanning from the Midwest to the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.
Things were just perfect in regards to the weather patterns to have not only an incredibly cold winter but on the heels of a cool and wet summer.
If you remember, you heard the term “Polar Vortex” thrown around quite often this year as if it was some vast right wing conspiracy constructed by our old pals over there at Halliburton and how it’s cold because the globe is warming…
Right…
The polar vortex this year was no different than it’s been for the last couple of million years, except this year, because of specific upper air jets and patterns, it headed a bit south and ushered in extremely cold winds from the Arctic.
Let’s fast forward a tad to this past week:
I live in the Mid-Atlantic and this week is was 81 degrees at the very highest. Last night we had a cold front come barreling in and all of those warm temperatures are now a thing of the past as a new air mass firmly planted its feet.
But today’s weather is not what’s important…
Personally, I study weather. When I was an Islander, I spent most of my summer weekends out on my boat; in the bay and in the ocean, fishing for bottom fish at local wrecks, shark fishing and tuna fishing.
Being that I was out there in a relatively small boat, I had to rely on the weather, not only what the fortune tellers were saying on TV but also doing my own homework. I always had to know what was going on.
However, now that I live in Virginia, that’s not so much of an issue, because if things get bad on a catfish pond, I can just roll out of there in my jon boat to the bank and be gone. But that doesn’t stop me from wanting to study weather.
Forecasters don’t just look at satellite imagery when predicting weather; they rely on a handful of domestic and international weather models, which are computer based.
The computers “see” what’s currently in real time and their programming software predicts what air masses move and how they do it and how low and high pressure systems will trek across the globe.
If you know weather, you may have heard of the 2 most popular models, the European model (Euro for short) and the Global Forecast System (GFS) which is one of the American models. Out of the 2, the Euro is superior and predicts storms further out than the GFS can.
Anyhow, something that has forecasters concerned right now is something that’s brewing and could smash the Mid Atlantic early next week.
For the past few model Euro runs, (they run on Zulu time) the 00z and 12z runs have seen an potentially strong system coming out of Texas and because the dreaded polar vortex will be in place over Lake Superior, its forcing the system to possibly swing East and cross Cape Hatteras, NC.
If this happens, the Mid-Atlantic is looking at seeing a very strong winter storm. VA is mostly snow and NC can be a dangerous ice storm. But also along with that, the Northwest winds from the PV will be flooding the entire East coast, bombing temperatures to below freezing until it moves away.
So what does that mean?
Well, if you thought winter was over, it may in fact not be by a long shot.
Secondly, if you are a commodities trader or simply invest in oil or gas ETFs, I can tell you this – if this scenario plays out, plan to see natural gas start to rise and rise quickly.
In the Mid-West, Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, a good percentage of homes are heated by natural gas and being that over the past 2 weeks the weather has warmed, speculation has built into gas, suggesting that winter is indeed over.
Once traders start to see that it’s not… well, expect to see that run I’m talking about in natural gas.