Last week’s lower max temperatures combined with cooler evening temperatures resulted in a light week for US cooling demand. The US population weighted number for the week ending 16 Aug was 54 CDDs, which is -15 vs. normal and -33 vs. last year (same week). More important than the overall US number is the regional breakdown; the weekly CDDs vs. normal were -21 for New England, -29 for the Mid-Atlantic, -35 for the East/North-Central states and -24 for the West/North-Central States (-9, -28, -53 and -59 vs. LY, respectively). The only US region to experience above normal cooling demand last week was the Northwest. The current week will see a shift to higher demand in the central and eastern states, as a high pressure system brings warmer temperatures to the northern tier of the country for the next 3-4 days. However, this warming looks to be short lived as next week’s pattern looks to be similar to the one that we saw last week, with most of the cooling demand restricted to the western US. We should note that from an energy demand perspective, the Weather Trends temperature outlook for much of the US has verified this summer, and demand expectations which we generated last year are on target to support the seasonal CDD profile.  In the tropics, Tropical Storm Fay is closely following the track that was issued by the National Hurricane Center, and is now over land in southern Florida, moving NNE at approximately 9 mph. TS Fay has posed no threat to rigs, and crude subsequently continued its’ decline as it dropped for the fourth straight session. Most estimates are in agreement that crude inventories rose last week (verification pending), as benign weather allowed for arrivals to pick up. Other than Fay, the rest of the Gulf and the Caribbean is pretty quiet. There is currently a system in the central Atlantic that we are monitoring for development; warmer ocean temperatures and an increase in convection over the last 36 hours serve as positive factors, but the upper air pattern as of this morning is uncertain.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 at 9:04 am and is filed under Energy, Global Commodities, Global Weather, Hurricanes, United States. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.