Whether it is winter’s last fling remains to be seen, but there’s enough cold and snowy weather in the Northeast and Midwest early in the week to keep prices ranging from flat to as much as a quarter higher in the East Monday. The West, where Rockies-area high temperatures were rising into the 50s and even to around 60, was flat to mildly softer, but saw no losses greater than several cents.

Conditions in the Midwest should be moderating a little starting Tuesday, according to The Weather Channel, but wet snow can be expected in the southern Appalachians. The Mid-Atlantic and New England are likely to get a short break in the weather Tuesday, TWC said, but a storm forming that night off the Carolinas coast may bring those two regions some more “cold season nastiness” at midweek.

A New England utility buyer said her area had experienced mixed rain and snow over the previous 24 hours. However, “everybody’s looking pretty good on storage,” and Northeast utilities in general are still in a “we’re out of winter” mood. They had a couple or so more days of cold to go through, “then we’ll get warmer again,” she said.

More than one source in the Midcontinent/Lower Plains region made reference to great golfing weather Tuesday. That may help explain why Midcontinent points tended to record most of the East’s smaller gains of around a dime or less.

Chicago citygates got “a little tighter to the screen,” observed a Midwest marketer. Indeed, Chicago quotes rose about a dime while natural gas futures fell a nickel. (Nymex’s petroleum-related energy contracts all fell sharply, with crude oil for April losing 69 cents to settle at $36.57/bbl.)

The marketer said he still was not finding all that much demand from the Midwest despite the cooler temperatures. “The Northeast is where most of the weather load is right now,” he said. The marketer noted that his company has been in storage injection mode since the beginning of March. “The heck with this March 31 end of withdrawal season,” he commented, saying he wanted to get a head start on putting gas back into the ground.

A Lower Plains utility buyer said his city’s high got up to 65 degrees Monday, “a little warmer than expected,” leading him to sell gas at Northern Natural’s demarcation point in the low $5.20s rather than purchase. Temperatures will be slightly cooler later this week, however, with highs in the 50s, he said.

The forecast was for the low 30s in the northern half of Florida Monday night, said the fuel buyer for a Sunshine State electric utility, but she was not buying any new gas. They are using “a little gas” supplied under term contracts, she added, but most of the current burn is fuel oil.

Texas Eastern-East Louisiana was really strong, and the spread to the M-3 market area zone “was right at variable costs,” said a Gulf Coast producer who also trades the Northeast. He noted that Transco Stations 30 and 45 have also been stronger this month whereas the more liquid Station 65 pooling point has tended to see lesser numbers than usual. “Station 30 is not even a penny behind Station 45, an odd situation as Station 30 is often 10 cents or more behind 45,” the producer said.

He went on to observe that “for the last three months in a row, Station 30 has been around 30 cents back from the Henry Hub, but this month it has been about half that. Also, [Station] 65 is usually ahead of the Hub and is now 4 cents back.” He was unable to detect the cause of these price anomalies.

One clue to the West’s relative softness came from Kern River’s bulletin board, which said Monday that linepack was high in all segments again. The pipeline had been reporting normal linepack levels throughout last week.

Commenting that last week’s weather ranged from 25% to 60% warmer than normal east of the Rockies, Lehman Brothers analyst Thomas Driscoll said he expects a “very low” storage withdrawal of 35 Bcf to be reported for the week ended March 5. His estimate compares to a year-ago withdrawal of 102 Bcf. Driscoll raised his end-of-season (March 31) inventory estimate from 950 Bcf to 1,000 Bcf, saying that assumes normal weather for the remainder of the heating season.

Citigroup’s Kyle Cooper came in even lower with a final estimation of a 21-31 Bcf pull, but said his confidence in the prediction was exceptionally low. “If the trend displayed by last week’s report continues, the draw could be even smaller,” Cooper said.

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