Natural gas futures advanced for a second straight session Thursday as traders looked beyond another light winter storage withdrawal to the prospect of incrementally tighter balances heading into the spring. 

Physical natural gas prices, meanwhile, surged in the West and the Northeast on near-term wintry conditions. NGI’s Spot Gas National Average jumped $1.900 to finish at $4.955/MMBtu.

The March Nymex futures contract rallied 14.0 cents to settle at $2.314 Thursday, adding to a 10.1-cent rally in the day-earlier period to erase the 20.2-cent sell-off that opened the holiday-shortened work week on Tuesday. 

From a technical standpoint, even after Thursday’s gains prices remained shy of levels ICAP Technical Analysis recently pegged as necessary to confirm bottoming...