Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Tough Call for Memorial Day Weekend

The modeling has been anything but consistent for this upcoming holiday weekend!  Numerical guidance often struggles with cut-off lows and a change in the pattern.  Both the Euro and the GFS have flip-flopped their solutions numerous times over the last couple of days.  Even when closely scrutinizing the individual ensembles from the GFS, they too are "all over the place" in terms of their solutions.  This is very typical as well in the summer months when timing of individual disturbances becomes very difficult as the wavelengths of the global Rossby Waves shorten and the embedded vort maxes are weaker.  One thing, however, that the modeling does agree upon is by the end of NEXT WEEK, a bona fide surge of heat and humidity will be ushered into the northeast thanks to a building and strengthening ridge.  Our first 90F looks to be VERY LIKELY by the 3rd or 4th of June!  The maps below show both the Euro and the GFS and their mostly agreed upon solutions:
If you look closely at the 2 above, you'll notice some differences, especially with the height of the ridge in the Pacific.  That does have major implications for the west coast of the US and potentially here in the east....but that can be a different story for a different day.

I am also attaching the total precip from the GFS for the next 8 days.  One can see the Ohio Valley is the hot spot for active storminess and some of that will spill into PA.  It appears as if the bulk of that precip will fall in our area in the Friday-Sunday time period, but again, the timing is very difficult to pinpoint as to which day looks to be the wettest.  I do feel confident, however, that as we progress through the weekend, the chances for precip will actually decrease but I could buy the fact that measurable rain will fall each of the days over the holiday weekend.
One way to look at the map above is that for areas in red, this is much above normal for precip.  For agricultural interests, this would cause planting and harvesting issues along with having yield implications.  So below are planting progress maps for both corn and soy in the heartland of the US.  It is clearly apparent that planting is behind the times as shown with the 5 year mean number.  Both corn and soy are about 10% behind normal planting progress.  Couple that with the idiotic mandate from the feds that bio fuels (ethanol) must be increased in gasoline over the next several years and this could lead to a quick futures commodity trade profit for those willing to take such a risk.  Again, please understand that this is for general information purposes only and those who do use it for investment purposes should check first their sanity and secondly their bank accounts.
 And now the soy map.....if I was any good with photoshop or GIS mapping, I would overlay the precip on both of these maps and you could compare the 2 as to precip coming and planting progress of the soft commodity.  But you'll just have to eyeball it the old fashioned way!
To me, and I'm sure you'll agree, the planting will be further delayed over the Ohio Valley and the bulk of the corn and soy belt thus producing a corn and soy opportunity for futures contract investments.......or not!  One thing to be sure, Chase Utley was back in the Phillies line-up last evening.  He had an 0-5 night at the plate (since he's on my fantasy baseball team!), but his presence in the line-up allowed the others to see more/better pitches and the Phillies looked like the team to beat for the remainder of the summer.

Have a good mid-week!

Smitty

AA:  Tough call on the weekend....looks like rain will threaten at almost anytime, and yes, even at states.  But, next week appears to have a surge of heat and humidity that would make mid-July proud!

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