From Texas to both corners of the North, the National Weather Service (NWS) now expects above-average summer heat across the vast majority of the country this summer – a welcome development for natural gas bulls.

If the outlook proved accurate, it would drive sustained elevated gas demand for the first time in 2024, helping to balance an oversupplied market and raise both cash and futures prices off the basement levels they hovered at through a mild winter and spring.

In an updated summer forecast released this month, NWS meteorologists said that, aside from a sliver of the Northern Plains, hotter-than-normal conditions were likely to canvas the Lower 48. Record or near-record heat could stretch from Texas to both the Pacific Northwest and the Northeast, with large swaths of...