About a month after the official start of fall, there is finally enough seasonal weather showing up to give some fundamental justification to price rebounds at nearly all points Monday. Tropical Storm Alpha showed up over the weekend but was given no chance at all of approaching the Gulf of Mexico.

A few flat to slightly lower points prevented an across the board sweep of increases ranging from a nickel or so to about $1.30. The Northeast, which waited for one of its namesake “Nor’easter” winter storms to arrive in full force Tuesday, saw most of the largest gains, while the Rockies/San Juan/Pacific Northwest constituted the weakest regional market.

The screen turned around from slight initial losses to move into positive territory for the rest of the session, finishing the day up 13.2 cents and possibly providing a little upward impetus to Tuesday’s cash market. However, the rest of Nymex’s energy futures complex was much softer.

Traders as far south into normally warm-weather territory as Houston were feeling an extra nip in the air Monday morning. The Houston-area forecast called for overnight lows to remain in the 40s through Wednesday before rising into the 50s Thursday and Friday, and even toward the end of the week daily highs are not likely to clear 70 by much.

After lingering over the Yucatan Peninsula longer than expected over the weekend (and giving it a thorough thrashing in the process), Hurricane Wilma seemed to try to make up for lost time by speeding up over the southern Gulf of Mexico toward another landfall in southern Florida. It weakened into a Category Two storm over the Sunshine State early Monday, but then quickly regenerated to Category Three after emerging into the Atlantic.

Wilma continued to push the pedal to the metal in the Atlantic, moving northeast at 37 mph from a 5 p.m. EDT position about 180 miles north of Great Abaco Island in the northwestern Bahamas. This was far enough out at sea to mean Wilma’s most westerly rains would barely affect much of the East Coast, and its speed was projected to have it already approaching Eastern Canada’s Maritimes provinces by late Tuesday.

As a result of Wilma’s distance, the South is expected to see moderate conditions Tuesday instead of having cool hurricane rains dumped on it. The Midwest will be somewhat in between the Northeast’s cold and the South’s mildness, while the West is expected to range from cool to warm — that is, mostly comfortable.

The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season set a record with its 22nd named storm of the season and borrowed from the Greek alphabet for the first time in christening Tropical Storm Alpha over the weekend. Alpha had weakened to a tropical depression Monday and subsequently to a trough about 385 miles southwest of Bermuda at 5 p.m. EDT. It was expected to be absorbed and dissipate as the more powerful Wilma approaches it, the National Hurricane Center said.

Offshore shut-ins continued to inch higher Monday as a residual effect of precautionary measures late last week against Hurricane Wilma, but with the storm having completely traversed the Florida peninsula and heading farther into the Atlantic, the outage figures were expected to start receding again this week. With 68 companies reporting to it, Minerals Management Service (MMS) counted 5,471.89 MMcf/d of gas as offline Monday, up 135.02 MMcf/d from Friday’s tally. Evacuated platforms and mobile drilling rigs jumped over the weekend to 243 and 24 respectively, MMS said. Cumulative deferred production since Aug. 26 rose to 342.511 Bcf, or 9.384% of normal Gulf of Mexico annual output of about 3.65 Tcf.

There was definitely no “storm hype” involved in Monday’s bullishness, said a Northeast trader. His trading area was getting some genuine weather load, and that was the market driver, he added. As the November bidweek starts to gear up, the trader said buying interest “is looking intense” in the early going.

“We’re getting some fall weather,” and it was about time since the market is already a month into the season, said a utility buyer in the Lower Midwest. The taste of more seasonal temperatures looks short-lived, though, he said. It was “kind of cold” during the weekend in his area but already starting to warm up a little Monday, with warming forecast to continue into the 60s by the weekend, he said.

The buyer said he is still weighing whether to buy any baseload gas for November. It was a toss-up as to whether his company could get by comfortably on term gas and storage or would need some new supplies, he said.

Citigroup analyst Kyle Cooper said his final estimation for the upcoming storage report looks for a build of 54-64 Bcf.

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