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Softball Spring.  Last night's European weeklies offered a fairly boring pattern for the next four weeks as far as temperature anomalies go.  The mean anomalies for the next four weeks are shown to the left.  Heat is seen to dominate toward the West Coast and we will need to watch for stronger drought-enhanced heat in the West at times, but otherwise, the majority of the U.S. looks to run very close to the climatological normals.  This means very low demand as climatology is quite benign at this point.  To really generate demand in the late spring, one needs to see a strong hot or cool pattern to dominate and spatially a colder North and warmer South.  The hints toward a cool-leaning Texas suggest maybe even lower demand risks.  The weeks 3-4 European weekly clusters (dividing members up into similar pattern camps) show quite a bit of variability potential, but very few strong pattern signals.

Could it all be Wrong?  Yes.  Extended range guidance like the European and CFS weeklies perform more poorly in the transitional seasons (spring/autumn), so they could definitely be missing some bigger weather stories at this temporal distance and we should continue to be vigilant.  However, our first line of defense- these extended range tools- are not offering much with regard to significant demand concerns currently.