Taking the reins of prompt month in their first regular session Monday, March natural gas futures — aided by a chilly outlook from the National Weather Service and supportive trading in crude — jumped 88.2 cents higher on the day to close at $9.389.

The day’s trading seemed to be influenced by a National Weather Service forecast, which shows winter might actually make another appearance this year in some regions. The National Weather Service’s latest eight-to-14-day forecast (Feb. 7-13) calls for below normal temperatures through the East and most of the central portions of the country, while the West Coast experiences above normal temperatures. If realized, the conditions would be a large departure from the above normal temperatures experienced to date by much of the country.

However, some wonder whether cold weather this late in the season even matters. “While the cold forecast might have spurred things a little bit, I think the idea of a price bump on a cold forecast this late in the season is silly,” said Brad Florer, a broker with ICAP Energy. “It’s just too late in the season for it to really be that big of a deal. We’ve had a couple of these longer-term cold predictions this season and our meteorologist hasn’t gotten onboard any of them.”

The broker noted that with the winter heating season already half over, any cold that shows up would have to be “really cold” and stick around for a long period of time in order to impact this market. “I can’t see the natural gas storage situation becoming an issue this winter,” he said. “I don’t know why anyone would be afraid of storage levels at this point in the season.”

AccuWeather.com meteorologist Jon Mabry said the abnormally warm winter to-date has people starting to ask what happened to winter altogether. “Well, it is not officially over, but many locations across the country are going to report all-time record warm Januarys Wednesday,” he said. “The reason for this is that the jet stream has remained well to the north over the past five weeks. This pattern has locked up arctic air over northern Canada. At the same time, a mild flow of air been flowing from the Pacific Ocean westward across the country.”

Laying off the weather angle, Florer said he would blame the price bump Monday on the relationship between natural gas and crude. March crude climbed 59 cents Monday to close at $68.35/bbl.

“I think crude has been a little more of a factor on natural gas than weather over the past few sessions,” he said. “The divergence between natural gas futures and crude futures has been spread to the max. On Friday, natural gas was trading $3.30 under crude on an MMBtu basis, which is historically about as wide as it gets. On Monday, the gap was closed to $2.60 or so. With crude up on all the Iranian tension going on, I think natural gas will be hard pressed to come off. I think that plays more of a factor than the latest weather report.”

Looking at potential resistance levels, Florer noted that March natural gas filled a gap from $9.10-9.26 by closing above it Monday. “If you’re a bull, you’ve got to like how that looks. You also have to like how crude looks. If you are a bull and you are long, you’ve got some things to be happy about for the first time in almost two months. I have $9.60 as the next target higher.”

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