Summer temperatures across the United States are likely to be normal to warmer than normal, but Citigroup Global Markets meteorologists Jon Davis and Mark Russo said they’re not expecting an unusually hot summer unlike what occurred last year.

“We feel there is a large range of possibilities both nationally and regionally,” they said in their closely watched seasonal forecast. “This will likely translate into a season that is much different than the pure persistency of the past winter. In the temperature arena, there will likely be a great deal of variability in week-to-week and month-to-month temperature trends. Nothing points to an overall cooler summer and it will likely be a normal to warm summer on a national basis.

“However we do not expect this summer to be as hot as last summer.”

They said the most likely location of “anomalous heat” will be in the middle of the country. “There is a debate as to whether this will be more of a feature in the northern areas, such as the Midwest, Northern Plains and western Great Lakes or the southern areas such as Texas.”

The Citigroup analysis indicates the cities that show the strongest likelihood of normal to below normal cooling degree days this summer are Phoenix and Los Angeles. There is a likelihood of above normal cooling degree days this summer in Chicago, Dallas, New York and Atlanta. However, Chicago has the highest likelihood of above normal CDDs, followed by Dallas. New York is less likely to see above normal CDDs because of what is occurring with the what meteorologists call the North Atlantic Oscillation, the feature that made last winter’s cold so severe for the eastern United States.

“The strongly negative NAO during the last winter is typically followed by summers that are not hot in the Northeast quadrant of the United States and the as well as southeast Canada. The bias for heat actually tends to be in the Pacific Northwest/southwestern Canada as well as the extreme southern portion of the United States,” they said.

The potential for heat in the Pacific Northwest could lead to a precarious situation for power buyers there because of the continuing drought and the low availability of hydroelectric supply. Any above normal heat also will likely put stress on natural gas deliveries, which will be serving much higher than average storage injection demand as well as demand from power generators.

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