I’m dreaming of a white Christmas – how about you?
Of course too much snow ahead of Christmas is bad for retailers and airlines as flights and even (gasp!) trips to the mall can be canceled by a big storm. This is a La Niña year, which means the Pacific Ocean is colder than average and that can lead to much more snow than we’ve had in the past few years. Accu-Weather’s long-term forecast already predicts at least 1 inch of snow for 50% of the country on Christmas Day (when did weather forecasting get this precise, one wonders?).
Accuweather’s chief long-range forecaster, Joseph Bastardi, said recently that a series of storms crossing the country before Christmas will deliver snow to the northern half of the United States. He also said the weather pattern is set up in the middle of this month to bring what he calls a “blockbuster” storm with 6 to 12 inches of snow and strong winds to the northeast. All in all, it’s just another of the many, many factors we need to stay on top of this holiday season.
Of course the oil and gas crowd are loving the cold weather so far but that’s due for a big flip as lots of snow from La Niña (and take this from an old ski bum) generally leads to a pretty warm winter overall. Right now, heating oil and natural gas is being extrapolated based on our recent cold snap (much worse in Europe) to be enough to work off the massive inventory overload but we are right at the top of the 5-year range in natural gas inventories and it’s going to take a bit more than a week or two of cold weather to reverse this trend:
Of course, this is nothing compared to the ridiculous over-supply of crude in the United States:
This is something you never hear covered in the MSM, as they give you their “news” between commercials for energy companies. It should go without saying that GE, a company who has tens of Billions of dollars in profits riding on ever-increasing energy prices, is NEVER going to tell you anything but how scarce oil is and how lucky we are to be allowed to pay $100 a barrel for it.
The fact that we have 10% more oil than the high end…
