Winter Forecast - Updated on Nov 3

[dan_s]

Dr. Joe Bastardi at https://www.weatherbell.com/premium/ has updated his winter forecast and he explains why in the Saturday Summary.

If you are invested in any upstream company that produces a lot of natural gas and propane (space heating fuels) then you need to get in the habit of watching Joe's Saturday Summaries and his Daily Updates.

Weather Underground is now forecasting a major winter storm to hit Minnesota and Wisconsin November 9-10, which matches up with Joe's 6-10 day forecast. A draw from natural gas storage the week ending November 16 should draw a lot of attention to how low U.S. gas storage is as a colder than normal winter begins.

Joe does expect a short "warm-up" in late November or early December before the really cold air spreads across the eastern 2/3rd of the nation.

A lot of homes in the New England area still heat with oil. Most of them wait until the first real winter weather hits before they fill their storage tanks. Home heating oil is a "distillate" and U.S. distillate inventories are extremely low for this time of year.

When I was a child we heated with oil until I was about ten when we switched to natural gas. A lot of old homes in our neighborhood (built in 1900 to 1910) used coal for space heating. My first job (age twelve) was going around to bring in coal from the garage for senior citizens in our neighborhood. One lady's heat was just her coal burning stove in the kitchen and we had to put her bed in the kitchen when it got real cold. The "Good Old Days" weren't all that good. Heating with gas is much cleaner and much safer. My father was a fireman and we had a lot of home fires caused by sparks from coal heating.