The new week is the perfect time for a new NG thread! My fingers will appreciate this. :)
Thanks very much, Larry!
The natural gas threads pile up the most posts in a short period of time for sure. If not for you, those threads might go into the hundreds of posts .
Actually, your timing is almost perfect for deciding when to start a new thread. Much appreciated!
This was the last one to get the background for where we are today:
NG 12/1/25-12/12/25
64 responses |
Started by WxFollower - Dec. 1, 2025, 9:09 a.m.
It appears as if we're in for a HIGHER open!
We did open higher and briefly spiked to over $1,000/contract higher with not much bullish hopes as long as the forecast stays mild in December.
Same weather story here on Monday!
Huge warm up this week!
Started by metmike - Dec. 13, 2025, 9:25 p.m.
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/116566/
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The last 0z European Ensemble average in purple/left showed the same thing. HDDs MUCH below average and continuing that trend at the end of the period.......for now. Some frigid air in Canada does leak south of the border but not enough penetrates deeply to have a significant impact on HDD's.
With such a steep temp gradient(north/south) a big shift south would turn bullish.
Note below, how far below the lines on the left are below the slowly increasing average line in green.
The lines start going up again at the end of the period, with a chance for that to lead towards a much colder week 3.
Is NG finally bottoming? It’s currently up 3%. If this were to hold, this would be the best day since Dec 5th, the day it peaked way up at 5.48. There’s been only one other up day since then, Dec 9th, when it closed up 1/2%.
Why do I think it’s up today? The AO and especially the NAO forecasts have gotten significantly more negative than yesterday’s more neutral forecasts. A strong -NAO lead to much colder 0Z and 6Z GFS after Christmas fwiw. This kind of thing happened for early this month.
Yesterday’s GEFS NAO forecast:
Today’s GEFS NAO forecast:
I agree with you, Larry!
I've been watching the AO and NAO drop this week with interest too.
As you remember though, the models busted badly ahead of all the cold air because they continually INCREASED the AO and NAO to values that would typically mean a pattern change to milder..........then day after day, week after week, the models would have to add colder days and a colder pattern to the updated forecasts.
However, just because something happened during 1 time frame doesn't mean we can apply it to other times frames. In this case, I'm just noting how crummy the models have been at forecasting the AO and NAO the past month.
You did a wonderful job pointing this out here just over a week ago!
By WxFollower - Dec. 8, 2025, 11:32 a.m.
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Maybe this means that the cold will be even colder than the AO and NAO like it was before???
Regardless, like you said the market acts like it's put in a temporary bottom here.
Part of that is that we came much too far down in too short of a period. I think it was a short term selling exhaustion.
NG is a market that, especially today will OVER react at times. In retrospect, the extreme blow off top higher earlier this month was an extreme, over reaction to the upside. Then the drop was an over reaction to the downside.
This last 0z European Ensemble model was +9 HDDs vs the previous one 12 hours earlier.
These were mainly from individual days as you can see below with the trajectory of the purple line at the end of the period being in a bearish posture. Also, the previous run was that much bearish(so all we did was take that away) and after that run came out yesterday, NG had a strong rally instead of dropping from the bearish 12z EE run.
Should be a robust drawdown tomorrow at 9:30 am for the EIA NG storage report. Quite a contrast across the country.
More people live where it was cold compared to where it was warm and estimates for residential heating demand based on temperature forecasts is the most important factor in driving natural gas futures prices in December.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/tanal/temp_analyses.php
NG easily had its best day since Dec 5th.
By metmike - May 2, 2022, 11:42 p.m.
https://www.psl.noaa.gov/map/images/ens/ens.html#nh
NCEP Ensemble t = 360 hour forecast 
NCEP Ensemble t = 360 hour forecast 
Arctic Oscillation Index, North Atlantic Oscillation Index, Pacific North American Index.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao.shtml
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/pna/nao.shtml
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/pna/pna.shtml
-4 HDDs on the last 12z European Ensemble model (blue/left) but NG continued soaring higher all afternoon!
Look how far the lines are BELOW the slowly increasing average in green. Average temperatures bottom out in around a month.
-167 Bcf. Robust for this time of year. Corrected, thanks to WxFollower!
NG was already well off the highs but this caused a spike lower almost back to UNCH for the February contract. Must have been a tad less/bearish than expected.
Still no sign of much colder weather, so the weather continues to be bearish. Hard for NG to generate long lasting upside when the 2 week forecasts are this mild.
for week ending December 12, 2025 | Released: December 18, 2025 at 10:30 a.m. | Next Release: December 24, 2025
| ks billion cubic feet (Bcf) | Year ago (12/12/24) | 5-year average (2020-24) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Region | 12/12/25 | 12/05/25 | net change | implied flow | Bcf | % change | Bcf | % change | |||||||||||||||||
| East | 797 | 843 | -46 | -46 | 827 | -3.6 | 834 | -4.4 | |||||||||||||||||
| Midwest | 966 | 1,030 | -64 | -64 | 1,014 | -4.7 | 1,014 | -4.7 | |||||||||||||||||
| Mountain | 271 | 277 | -6 | -6 | 275 | -1.5 | 223 | 21.5 | |||||||||||||||||
| Pacific | 304 | 306 | -2 | -2 | 297 | 2.4 | 268 | 13.4 | |||||||||||||||||
| South Central | 1,242 | 1,290 | -48 | -48 | 1,226 | 1.3 | 1,208 | 2.8 | |||||||||||||||||
| Salt | 338 | 354 | -16 | -16 | 338 | 0.0 | 337 | 0.3 | |||||||||||||||||
| Nonsalt | 903 | 936 | -33 | -33 | 888 | 1.7 | 871 | 3.7 | |||||||||||||||||
| Total | 3,579 | 3,746 | -167 | -167 | 3,640 | -1.7 | 3,547 | 0.9 | |||||||||||||||||
| Totals may not equal sum of components because of independent rounding. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Working gas in storage was 3,579 Bcf as of Friday, December 12, 2025, according to EIA estimates. This represents a net decrease of 167 Bcf from the previous week. Stocks were 61 Bcf less than last year at this time and 32 Bcf above the five-year average of 3,547 Bcf. At 3,579 Bcf, total working gas is within the five-year historical range.
For information on sampling error in this report, see Estimated Measures of Sampling Variability table below.
Note: The shaded area indicates the range between the historical minimum and maximum values for the weekly series from 2020 through 2024. The dashed vertical lines indicate current and year-ago weekly periods.
After a couple of up days, short covering and dead cat bounce, ng is back to sharply lower again.
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/natural-gas
1. 1 day: Red line was when the EIA number was released.
2. 1 week: Red line was when the EIA number was released.
3. 1 month: Huge rally(blow off top in 12-5-25), followed by record collapse(greatest loss so fast in history) after the weather models turned sharply milder, starting 12-6/7).
4. 1 year: False upside break out (FAILED) above March highs(from extreme cold, very early in the heating season) after significant low in early Sept. Spike straight down last week was the biggest/fastest drop in NG history.
5. 10 years: Long term upside break out from symmetrical triangle (higher lows and lower highs) thats still valid. Lines of support/resistance drawn horizontally. Fake upside break out for shorter time frames as described above. 
