The industry picked a good year to fill up the nation’s gas storage fields. This winter could be bitter cold, according to two major weather outlooks released last week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Salomon Smith Barney Meteorologist Jon Davis. Both forecasts expect the winter to be colder than normal with temperatures similar to last winter on average but with significant swings in temperatures and precipitation.

Davis’s outlook last Tuesday helped move the near-month natural gas futures contract up 20 cents. He said the winter is likely to be near or among the top 33% of the coldest winters in last 106 years. And NOAA’s outlook, predicting the winter for most of the United States will feel like “a sequel to last year’s cold season,” pushed prices up another 19 cents on Thursday.

NOAA sees sharp swings in temperature and precipitation, including heavy lake-effect snows in the Northeast and Midwest, cold air outbreaks in the South, and the potential for Nor’easters along the East Coast.

NOAA’s meteorologists said the absence of a strong El Nino or La Nina climate pattern leaves the door open for a highly variable winter, which will impact the winter weather extremes such as cold, snow, rain and ice that the nation may experience. El Nino is a period of warmer-than-normal seas surface temperatures (SSTs) in the Equatorial Pacific, and a La Nina is a period of colder-than-normal sea surface temperatures in the same region. When SSTs are neither warm nor cold, they are said to be neutral. Currently SSTs are maintaining a neutral state in the Pacific Ocean, both Davis and NOAA meteorologist said.

“We don’t expect a repeat of the record-breaking cold temperatures of November-December of last year, but this winter should be cooler than the warm winters of the late 1990s,” said Scott Gudes, NOAA’s acting administrator. “Citizens should prepare for the full range of winter weather.”

Climate factors that influenced last winter will play a similar role this season. They include the Arctic Oscillation, which influences the number of cold-air outbreaks in the South and Nor’easters on the East Coast, and the Madden-Julian Oscillation, which can impact the number of heavy rain storms in the Pacific Northwest, NOAA said.

NOAA’s regional outlook calls for the following:

Davis concluded in his “2001-2002 Winter Outlook” that national average temperatures this winter should be quite similar to the average temperatures last winter, which ranked 24 on a scale of 1-106 with 1 being the coldest.

“The odds do not point to an exceptionally cold winter such as one out of the top 10 coldest, but that is not totally out of the question,” Davis said in his report. “One outcome that we believe is out of the question is the possibility of an extremely warm winter… Our research indicates that the potential for this winter to be even in the warmest third of historical norms (72-106) is very slight.”

Davis believes that the upcoming winter will continue the trend reversal from the record warm winters of the late 1990s. The November-December period last winter was the coldest such period in the last 106 years. He doesn’t expect the early portion of this winter to be that extreme. But unlike the second half of last winter, which was milder, with January ranking 58 and February ranking 56 out of 106 winters, Davis believes that the second part of the 2001-02 winter (January-February) will be much colder.

He points to several factors this winter that will produce colder-than-normal temperatures on average. One is a negative Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and another is the neutral El Nino/La Nina.

Currently there is a “textbook negative (cold) phase of PDO,” which is a long-term climatic cycle with phases that last two or three decades, according to Davis. These phases involve changes in sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean and are related to the short-term El Nino/La Nina phenomenon. A positive PDO is an “El Nino enhancer” and a “La Nina suppressant,” Davis said. A negative PDO is an “La Nina enhancer” and an “El Nino suppressant.” The oscillation consists of large scale changes in sea surface temperatures. In the 1980s and 1990s, the there was a positive PDO and now the PDO has switched to a negative phase.

As a result, the United States “should not experience the high incidence of record warm winters that characterized the 1990s,” said Davis. “This does not mean that the new decade will feature 10 cold winters in a row. What it does mean is that the chance of the United States having a repeat of the late 1990s (that is three consecutive warm winters) is exceedingly unlikely.” The probability points toward more normal winter weather ahead, he said. In the near-term, however, it points toward another cold winter.

The neutral El Nino/La Nina also indicates colder weather this winter. “SSTs this year are very similar to last year going into the winter heating season,” said Davis. “This points more toward frequent intrusions of Arctic air this winter, which would lead to a more normal or colder-than-normal winter.”

Another factor, Davis examined, is what he calls the presence of “cold pooling.” It is the time when cold air begins to build up across the polar regions and snow and ice begin to expand southward, which will allow the jet stream to pick up the cold air and drive it across the continent during the winter. Last year there was an early build up of cold air across the northern regions, which set the stage for a very cold early winter. This year there was a steady pooling early but a slight decrease since August. Some northern “source” regions, however, have been showing colder than normal temperatures recently.

As a result, all the factors are in place for another colder-than-normal winter, according to Davis. Based on current SST patterns, he believes the strongest bias toward cold, and the coldest temperatures will occur in the central and eastern United States, particularly in the early part of winter.

“This is important from and energy perspective,” Davis noted, “because the bulk of the U.S. population and, therefore, heating demand can be found in the eastern half of the county.”

Heating oil demand is almost exclusively dependent upon temperatures across the northeastern portion of the nation. Last winter, the Northeast experienced a more normal temperature trend, a sharp reversal from preceding winters. Davis expects similar or even colder temperatures in the Northeast this winter. “Thus we see a winter of high heating oil demand in the Northeast with no sign of a reversal back to the warm winters of the last-1990s.”

Natural gas demand is spread out across the nation in contrast to heating oil, which is concentrated in the Northeast. Davis expects natural gas demand to be similar to last winter, but he noted “heightened sensitivity” to weather probably won’t be present this winter because of the current abundant supply situation with storage levels already above 3 Tcf and production up from last year.

“To sum up, based on our weather outlook, above normal heating demand is expected across much of the country this winter. As a result, overall natural gas and hearing oil demand is expected to be on the high side. In terms of supply, an abundant reserve of natural gas and an adequate supply of heating oil should temper any dramatic price movements.”

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