Excerpts from Trade Winds Newsletter

Typically, if Trade Winds gives any market commentary dealing with the energy sector, it will be provided here. Long term trading strategies may also be a part of this package from Trade Winds. It is update once a month the first few days of the month.

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Sample Report:

Look Ahead to Winter

While we have no new analog studies based on recent weather patterns (as a whole 1998 was different from any year seen previously), it would be a good time to comment further on last month’s findings. Past La Niña years (the basis of last month’s study) still have to be viewed as the best source for analog years at this point. La Niña conditions continued to be present in the Pacific during September. Sea-surface temperatures in the central equatorial Pacific continued to run better than 3 degree Celsius below normal. The Southern Oscillation Index for August was +0.8, the fourth straight month with a positive value; the reading for September will likely be in the neighborhood of +0.5 to +1.2. The latest advisory from the Climate Prediction center stated that they expect strengthening La Niña conditions for the remainder of 1998, with La Niña conditions expected through next spring.

Based on the 12 winters this century with moderate or strong La Niña events, one could make an argument that Des Moines (with 4 of those winters being much colder than normal) stands a much greater than normal probability (33% in fact) of seeing a frigid winter of 1998/99. This would go along with some forecasters who are calling for frigid weather in the Northern Plains and “possibly spreading to the western Great Lakes area”. The fact, which makes us most leery of such reasoning, is that all of those four frigid winters occurred prior to 1930, as did all three of the La Niña winters, which were among the ten coldest U.S. winters on record. Remember that the last strong La Niña accompanied an unusually WARM winter (in 1988/89). Furthermore, all of this leaves aside the fact that the moderate to strong La Niña years this century do not show ANY tendency favoring cold winters in the Northeast. If you want to argue that this winter will be colder than last winter, or even that it is likely to be close to normal. such statements may be hard to argue against. But if you want to argue for a frigid winter, not so fast...we will reserve judgement until we see what October weather is like, and until we’ve had another month to follow several indicators we used successfully for past winter forecasts.

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Charlie Notis and Freese-Notis Weather
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