With most cooling load having eroded in the South and only a smattering of heating demand coming along to replace it, the cash market needed only a gentle nudge from the expiration-day dive of 25.5 cents by October futures Monday to record across the board losses Tuesday. Only one point fell by less than double digits.

Declines ranged from about C5 cents (Empress) to a little more than 35 cents. Softness largely ignored geographic market distinctions, with nearly all of the drops within the range of 10-30 cents and a large majority of them clustered in the 20s.

Wednesday’s launch of the October aftermarket will have meager futures support after the November contract made its prompt-month debut with a gain of 4.5 cents (see related story).

Somewhat surprisingly, Malin and the PG&E citygate saw a couple of the day’s smallest losses of a little more than a dime despite PG&E issuing a high-inventory OFO for Wednesday (see Transportation Notes).

Parts of the Rockies were predicted to see sub-freezing overnight lows; however, the region’s largest metropolitan area of Denver was expected to get no lower than the upper 40s, which probably played a part in Rockies numbers taking some of Tuesday’s largest hits.

Other than forecasts of 85-90 or so peaks in Texas and Florida, most of the South is basking comfortably with highs in the 70s currently, which has reduced regional power generation load considerably. Even as far west as the Phoenix area, which was still experiencing its normal torrid conditions in the low to mid 100s Tuesday, will be slipping back to the mid 90s Wednesday, according to Weather Central.

In the weather outlook for other sections of North America, mild to cool remains the operative description, although Alberta is feeling a touch of winter with lows in the upper 20s forecast for Wednesday.

A Texas marketer said he thinks it largely “will depend on which way Nymex goes overnight,” but he would expect most spot prices for the first of the month to be up a little Wednesday, maybe by as much as a nickel to a dime. Usually in trading for the beginning of a new month, especially when it falls in the middle of a week, people will try to get their daily deals done early and try not to get caught by any surprises, he said.

Estimating an October index of $3.87 for the Chicago citygate, the marketer said it appears that the market will have higher first-of-month indexes for the first time since late spring or early summer. “The flame is apparently burning a little bluer,” he joked.

A Midcontinent trader said he saw most October baseload in his region centered around the mid $3.30s. He said he sold a couple of packages at index flat, but his CenterPoint-East deal went for index minus a penny.

“There’s no spreads anywhere” currently, the trader lamented; it’s essentially Midcontinent production-area pricing plus variable transport costs equals approximately what one gets delivered into the Midwest. A lot of marketing companies have trouble getting by when they don’t have any spreads to work with, he said.

The National Weather Service (NWS) expects fairly moderate conditions during the Oct. 5-9 workweek in most of the East. Its six- to 10-day forecast posted Tuesday afternoon calls for above-normal temperatures everywhere east of a line running southwestward from central Michigan to the western edge of South Texas, leaving out the western half of the Midwest, where normal readings are likely. NWS also predicted above-normal temperatures in the coastal western thirds of Washington state and Oregon along with the northwestern corner of California. Below-normal mercury levels are forecast in a broad western swath between lines running from northwest Montana through central California and from eastern Minnesota through the western tip of Texas.

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