Good Morning,
One nugget of information today which caught me by surprise, perhaps because I am sitting in 80 degree Mexico at the moment, was a cut in the RFC’s water supply forecast for yesterday:
NWRFC Water Supply Forecast – Apr-Sep:
Pretty much all basins are off from last week despite above normal realized precip. The only conclusion one can draw is that most of that precip came as rain, not snow. The snow basin reports somewhat support that conclusion:
Hard to believe it rained at any of these pillows above 5000 feet but the numbers don’t lie, do they? This may change our outlook for the next guidelines for Flood Control draft to less bearish, though just slightly. A lot will depend on how the current storms affect snow pack:
Mid-C Composite Weather Forecast
It is clearly colder than the recent past and yet remains modestly wet suggesting at least normal builds, maybe slightly above normal. NP is getting slammed again with another major rain event:
NP15 Composite Precipitation Forecast
Despite the big precip in No Cal their reservoirs are struggling to fill, especially New Melones which was sitting at 2 maf in 2012 and now is just 0 .3 maf – the hole was just too deep to fill.
Wind blew hard yesterday at the Mid-C rendering bearish real-time prices though the outlook for the weekend is calmer:
Stream flows remain robust (more rain than snow) on the lower Columbia:
So robust that yesterday’s flows at Bonneville exceeded same day flows in 2015 and 2014. BC Hydro continues to waffle, neither selling or buying big from the Mid-C – perhaps they are feeling a bit long at the moment.
Our short-term outlook remains neutral in the northwest and slightly bullish in the south. Our Q2 outlook is a tad less bearish given the cuts in the Apr-Sep water supply but we are a long ways from being bullish. Unless there is compelling news today we would just sit on whatever positions we had and watch the events unfold over the weekend.
Mike