Freezing weather accompanied by copious amounts of snow had already settled in throughout much of the Northeast and Midwest and eastern parts of the South Monday and was due to continue Tuesday. The predictable result was sharply higher prices across the board in Monday’s launch of the March aftermarket.

The sweeping gains were primarily driven by weather fundamentals, sources said, but prices also had belated support from Friday’s climb of 26.1 cents in April futures. The return of industrial load from its usual weekend slump also played a supporting role.

Several Northeast citygates peaked at $8 or more in realizing upticks ranging up to nearly 90 cents in New England, although Transco Zone 6-New York City recorded a relatively small average gain of about 20 cents. Overall, prices ran up in double digits at all points. The West, where most of the milder weather is currently in residence, saw most of the smallest increases of a little more than a dime to 45 cents or so. Otherwise, non-Northeast prices tended to range between 30 and 65 cents or so higher.

“They’re predicting 8-12 inches of snow here,” said a marketer in the lower Northeast who added that he was just getting ready to walk out the door when NGI called in order to try to get home before conditions got much worse. The nor’easter raging in the region “should make for an ‘interesting’ commute” Tuesday, he said. As strong as Monday’s cash market was, he looks for basically flat numbers Tuesday, noting that a barely higher screen provided no new guidance Monday and that the worst of the storm should be ended Wednesday. Cash quotes started strongly, fell off for a while and then rallied late, he said.

The marketer said he was unaware of any bidweek business still being done Monday, noting that “pretty much everything” got wrapped up Friday or earlier. Everybody that he trades with was concentrating on swing deals for the first.

It was snowing in the Midwest as well, making everything “gloomy and doomy,” according to a marketer in the region. She managed to find one silver lining: “At least it [snow] is not accumulating. Her company paid in the low $6.80s at the Consumers Energy citygate in Michigan, and “that kind of price hurts,” she said. There’s a lot of warm weather out in the West, the marketer observed, and “if it comes our way” that should knock prices back down in a hurry.

Meanwhile, a Calgary-based producer pronounced it “beautiful here” with afternoon temperatures around 50 degrees F. “Better them than us,” he added, referring to the eastern snowstorms. Weather-related demand was not very heavy at western points, he said, “but everything else climbs because it’s cold in the East.” The producer said he also would expect essentially flat pricing Tuesday. Because western markets were relatively weak compared to the strength elsewhere, the Sumas basis spread from Henry Hub widened nearly 15 cents Monday, he said.

Symptomatic of the lighter western loads was Kern River warning shippers again Monday that banking on the system continued to be a problem and that linepack levels had increased since Friday “despite daily reporting of high linepack and high linepack notices” posted on Feb. 17 and 24 and a critical notice of high linepack being posted Friday. Unless the problem is resolved soon, the pipeline said it “may take any necessary action to reduce the excess supply.”

Lehman Brothers analyst Thomas Driscoll predicted that a storage withdrawal of 125 Bcf will be reported for the week ending Feb. 25. Kyle Cooper made a final estimation of a 111-121 Bcf pull.

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