December 16, 2004
Yahoo News


NEW YORK (Reuters) - After a brief warming, the U.S. Northeast and Midwest will get another frosty spell and a possible major storm next week that will bolster demand for heating fuels, forecasters said Thursday.

The first real chill of the season occurred earlier this week for much of the nation, from New England to Texas. And a warming late this week will be short-lived, said Rod Ferguson, senior meteorologist with WSI Corp. in Billerica, Massachusetts.

"I wouldn't really call it a warm-up as much as a moderation in the next few days from the cold we have seen," Ferguson said, referring to the Northeast and Midwest. "We start to trend cooler over the weekend."

A snowstorm by Sunday from the Mid-Atlantic states such as Maryland and Virginia will move north and hit most of the Northeast by Monday and Tuesday, Ferguson said.

He said there is a chance that coastal cities like Boston and New York may get more rain than snow, with the snowfall mainly inland.

Demand for heating oil and natural gas will be moderate before Monday's colder temperatures, forecasters said.

"It looks like the weather next week could be another deep freeze. I wouldn't want to be short," said one trader of natural gas on Thursday.

The U.S. National Weather Service on Thursday predicted that temperatures in the East, Southeast and much of the Midwest extending east from Kansas and Texas would be below normal.

And it will be colder than normal in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Wyoming, the NWS forecast.

The Northeast is the largest heating oil market in the world. The weather there greatly affects prices for fuels, including heating oil, diesel and jet fuel.

Natural gas is the heating option of choice in the Midwest and South, where the cold and snow are expected to show up by Saturday.

Chicago, for instance, will have a low temperature of 4 degrees Fahrenheit on Monday morning, private forecaster AccuWeather said, with a wind chill putting that low at -18 F.

In Houston, below-normal temperatures will remain through the middle of next week, with the low points being 34 F Monday morning and 38 F Tuesday, AccuWeather predicted.

The Northeast will see above-normal temperatures Thursday by as much as 10 F. It will be 1-3 F above normal on Friday, normal during the weekend, and the mercury will dip 6-12 F below normal by Monday, private forecaster Meteorlogix said.

The six- to 10-day outlook for the Northeast temperatures is "below normal."

AccuWeather meteorologist Joe Bastardi and WCI's Ferguson called for part of the Northeast to be as much as 20 F below normal early next week.

"Cold in the Northeast will be 10-20 below normal for a couple of days with arctic air. The threat of heaviest snow is for northeastern Pennsylvania and northern New Jersey northeastward through New England," said Bastardi.

"There is a threat for 3 inches plus in the cone from Fredericksburg, Virginia, to Ocean City, Maryland, on the southeast side, and from Fredericksburg to Williamsport on the west side," he added.

(Additional reporting by Joe Silha in New York and Chris Doering in Washington)

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