World May Miss La Nina’s Market-Rattling Effects as Odds Dim
- Harder-to-predict patterns may hold sway over gas, soy markets
- La Nina has caused floods in coal fields, drought in soy crops
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La Nina, a weather phenomenon that could make parts of the U.S. colder, Brazil drier and Australia wetter, boosting prices for natural gas, soybeans and coal, probably won’t come around this year.
The U.S. Climate Prediction Center said Thursday it is dropping its La Nina watch and lowering the odds it will form to 35 to 45 percent from 75 percent in June, according to Michelle L’Heureux, a forecaster with the center in College Park, Maryland. Prospects for La Nina dimmed after models suggested the Pacific has reached its coolest phase for this cycle and will moderate through the rest of 2016. Still, no one is saying La Nina definitely won’t arrive.