Toward the latter half of the month we can expect above average temperatures only over the Great Basin, New England and Florida. The rest of the lower 48 will be near average with a sizable area of lower than average temperatures over rain-soaked Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas. New England won't warm up until the latter half of the forecast period as the trough that has persisted over the NE for weeks finally flattens out allowing west rather than NW flow to warm things up a bit.

Early this week Kansas and Arkansas are in for it again as a stalled frontal boundary stretching from Colorado to Virgina act as the focus for the development of large thunderstorm complexes. Moisture is pushing inland from the western Gulf of Mexico as it wraps around the west side of a high stalled over TX and enters the stalled boundary area over Colorado then shoots east assisted by a more-or-less stationary jet stream. By mid week, however, a ridge will build over the SW and turn the flow over the middle of the country to the NW which will push the frontal boundary to the south. It will lie on a convex-upward arc from South Carolina to Amarillo TX by the end of the week giving KS/AR/MO a few days to dry out. Then a fly may enter the ointment, according to the Canadian Global Model. A tropical wave over the Leeward Islands this morning is forecast to enter the southern Gulf of Mexico late Thursday and form into a tropical storm on Friday/Saturday. No other respected model develops this scenario yet, although each model does lower surface pressures over the SW Gulf by the weekend, so there is support for the notion. This week the potential for development of a tropical wave into a Gulf of Mexico storm by the weekend or early next week is an increasing possibility.

Given the foreseeable end of the cool period over the NE and the risk of a gulf of Mexico storm increasing, its my opinion that NG has likely bottomed out for the short term and now its time to begin accumulating a modest long position. There's still time for a sizable heatwave over the eastern half of the US this summer and tropical storms create the potential for some damage to production,although not nearly as much as they used to.