Price movement was mixed Wednesday, but there were a lot more downs than ups as an early-week surge of colder temperatures appeared ready to acknowledge that the official start of spring is just around the corner (next week, actually). Declines not only outnumbered the gains, but also were substantially larger in many cases.

Advances ranged from a couple of pennies to nearly 15 cents, but mostly were about a nickel or less. With quite a few points coming in as flat, drops ranged to nearly a quarter. Most of the modest firmness occurred at western and Midcontinent points, while Northeast citygates tended to see the largest losses.

The Northeast led the overall price slide Wednesday despite appearing to have at least a couple more days of wintry weather to get through. Most East Coast metro areas will see highs in the 40s Thursday, according to The Weather Channel (TWC), but they will get as low as the 20s in parts of upper New England and upstate New York. The Midwest will be fairly mild in its more southerly sections, but a fast-moving snowstorm is due Thursday from Iowa through Michigan, TWC said.

The Southwest can expect moderate conditions, but cold and wet are the weather watchwords for the Pacific Northwest, and a fair amount of snow is predicted for the interior Rockies. The South remains pretty moderate for the time being, but should start turning colder as the weekend approaches.

If any firmness remains in the spot market Thursday, it will be without the support of prior-day screen strength. The April natural gas contract followed up Tuesday’s 16-cent gain with a dip of 2.4 cents Wednesday, amid overall softness in Nymex’s energy futures complex.

The market has seen “a little bit of strength lately,” but it’s questionable whether it can extend price firmness any further, said a Midcontinent/Midwest marketer. His company was in heavy storage injection mode for much of last week, he continued, but now that cash prices are “pretty much in line with April’s,” it has cut back significantly on storing gas.

Midwest weather currently is about normal; that is, it’s not freezing, the marketer said. Traders have got to remind themselves that “normal” in mid-March is nothing like “normal” in mid-January, he said. He expects prices will continue to weaken now that the worst of a short burst of colder weather appears to be past.

Though it’s not as meaningful with spring beginning as it would be in the middle of winter, the National Weather Service expects below normal temperatures throughout most of the U.S. during the March 20-24 workweek. In the West, only the West Coast states along with essentially all of Nevada and most of western Idaho are excluded from a forecast of below normal. The excluded area contains the only section where above normal readings are due: the northern two-thirds of California and the western two-thirds of Oregon, along with the northwestern edge of Nevada and the southwest corner of Washington. Otherwise, below normal temperatures are expected in the rest of the nation except for Maine, the Upper Midwest and the southern tier of states below a line running from southern South Carolina through central Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana into South Texas.

Global Insight analyst Jim Osten predicts storage withdrawals of 56 Bcf and 60 Bcf to be reported for the weeks ending March 10 and March 17 respectively. The Reuters news service survey of 22 industry players yielded an average expectation of a 60 Bcf pull last week from an overall range of 20 Bcf to 101 Bcf.

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