Commodity desk · Henry Hub (NG) · SERC power dispatch
Southeast U.S. · Power & Gas
The Southeast is the load center where summer temperature is gas demand: a two-degree warm anomaly across Atlanta-to-Houston in July moves more molecules than most supply headlines. This desk reads the six-week and seasonal temperature ledgers as degree days, the unit dispatch actually trades.
ENSO state · through Sep 2026
very strong El Niño+3.40 · strengthening · Oct 2026 provisional +3.83
The Forecast Network's ERA5 multivariate ENSO index (the series behind celsius.earth/enso); positive is El Niño-like. Monthly means arrive about six weeks after the month; the provisional month is ERA5T and may still move.
Current stage
Shoulder — fall
Temp, next 2 wk
+0.8°F vs normal
Total DD, next 2 wk
16 vs 14 nml
SEAS5, next 3 mo
+0.0°F vs hindcast
GEFS week 1, belts
68°F σ 0.8
The daily sheet · 2026-10-21 to 2026-11-03
Temperature anomaly · °F vs 1991–2025 normal
Total degree days · base 65°F, brass dash = normal
Day-by-day ensemble means from the same ECMWF extended run as the weekly ledger — the short-term sheet a desk reads each morning. Days are UTC.
The six-week ledger · ECMWF extended ensemble, 2026-10-21 00z
Temperature anomaly · °F vs 1991–2025 normal
Degree days · base 65°F, vs normal
The belts, first fortnight
Region
Temp anomaly
Rain
% of normal
Southeast U.S. (SERC/Gulf)
+0.8°F
27 mm
58%
Ensemble-mean weekly aggregates over the desk's growing belts (land cells, production-weighted); whiskers show the ensemble spread carried with the mean — an upper bound for a weekly average. Weeks run from the initialisation date.
The ensemble room · GEFS 2026-10-22T06:00Z
Week-1 mean temp, belts
68.0°F median
Member range, 10–90%
66.9–68.7°F
Ensemble spread
σ 0.8°F
2 m temperature, every member · °F
Southeast U.S. (SERC/Gulf) centroid · UTC days
Week-1 ensemble-mean 2 m temperature · full sizeEnsemble spread (σ) of the week-1 mean · full size
All 31 members of NOAA's GEFS at 0.25°, days 0–10, maps rendered by the network's grads3 engine. The plumes show every member with the 10–90 and 25–75 envelopes, the median in ink and the control dashed; probability maps count members cell by cell. Belt statistics are each member's production-weighted mean over the desk's belt boxes (grid cells of land and sea alike), counted member by member. Raw GEFS, uncalibrated — the distribution is the forecast, not a single line.
The plates · the fortnight on the map
Temperature anomaly · Week 1 · 2026-10-21 → 2026-10-27
Rainfall, percent of normal · Week 1 · 2026-10-21 → 2026-10-27
Temperature anomaly · Week 2 · 2026-10-28 → 2026-11-03
Rainfall, percent of normal · Week 2 · 2026-10-28 → 2026-11-03
Temperature anomaly (°C vs normal)≤ −4−4 to −2−2 to −1−1 to −½near normal+½ to +1+1 to +2+2 to +4> +4
Rainfall, percent of normal (% of normal rain)< 4040–6060–80near normal120–150150–200200–300> 300
EC-46 ensemble-mean weekly fields at 0.25°, painted in the Herbarium stepped ramps over the desk's belts (the oxblood rectangles). Near-normal stays paper; sea and no-data carry no ink; rainfall percent is unpainted where the weekly normal is under 2 mm. Cells are honest — drawn at the data's own resolution.
The seasonal ledger · SEAS5, initialised Oct 2026
Run-to-run · the last 6 initialisations
A forecast that holds its shape across initialisations deserves more weight than one that just appeared.
Latest run, month by month
Month
Temp anom
Rain anom
% of normal
Topsoil moisture anom m³/m³
Oct 2026 ◔
+2.1°F
+35 mm
134%
-0.010
Nov 2026
+1.0°F
+32 mm
133%
+0.009
Dec 2026
-0.2°F
+29 mm
126%
+0.009
Jan 2027
-0.7°F
+36 mm
130%
+0.008
Feb 2027
-1.2°F
+42 mm
137%
+0.010
Mar 2027
-0.4°F
+29 mm
124%
+0.010
Apr 2027
+0.6°F
+36 mm
132%
+0.014
◔ part elapsed. Anomalies vs the store's ERA5 hindcast climatology; percent-of-normal vs the AgroClim 1991–2025 normals. Topsoil moisture is volumetric water in the top 7 cm — negative is drier than the hindcast normal.
The crop calendar · what this weather means now
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Cooling season ★
Shoulder — fall
Heating season ★
Shoulder — spring
★ market-critical stage · the outlined column is the current month.
What the desk watches
Weekly CDD/HDD versus normal from the ensemble-mean forecast — the desk's headline number, computed against the same AgroClim normals as every other ledger on this site.
Anomaly persistence: a ridge that holds for two forecast weeks is a gas story; a two-day spike is not.
Shoulder-season swings, when both CDDs and HDDs are in play at once.
Climate drivers
ENSO sets the winter tilt (El Niño: cooler, wetter Gulf winters — more HDDs south, fewer north), while summer ridging is more local: watch the weekly ledger rather than the seasonal one from May to September.
