US Morning Demand Note, Tuesday, July 07, 2026
The dominant signal heading into today's US session is a persistent upper-level ridge driving cooling demand more than 80 CDDs above the 15-day seasonal norm nationally, but the latest model run is trimming that extreme at the margins, with ERCOT and the South/West registering the sharpest pullbacks while the Midwest holds its ground.
The synoptic picture remains one of ridge-dominant pattern across the central and southern US, suppressing frontal activity and sustaining anomalous heat across all four tracked zones. What has changed this run is the trajectory: the national 15-day gas-weighted CDD total fell by 18 in the latest run, and the widest single-day change is positioned near the tail of the window, July 22, suggesting the models are not front-loading the erosion but rather pushing the peak-to-normal transition toward the back half of the period. That structure matters for interpreting the zone prints: the near-term setup is largely unchanged, and the pullback in southern totals reflects the models beginning to resolve how the ridge eventually breaks down, not an imminent change in the driving pattern. There is no confirmed trough sequence in the current data, but the convergence across three of four zones toward lower totals implies the ensemble is increasingly consistent about eventual ridge retreat rather than indefinite locking.
The Midwest stands apart from the other zones. Chicago Citygate and MISO are printing a near-flat run-to-run change, the ridge over the central US appears locked, with the anomaly running well above normal and showing no directional change in the current run. Until a trough drops out of Canada or the jet stream buckles southward, this zone is pricing persistent above-normal gas-burn in power generation. The Northeast, by contrast, is eroding: Algonquin and TETCO M3 are still above normal but the 20-CDD pullback in this run is the largest relative to that zone's spread, consistent with the eastern edge of the ridge losing coherence or an Atlantic influence beginning to exert itself. ERCOT and the South/West are carrying the heaviest absolute anomalies, both in the 175-240 range above seasonal norms, but both also registered the largest absolute negative deltas this run. The mechanism is likely the same: the ridge remains in command for the near term, but models are adjusting the duration and intensity of the back half of the window. HSC, Waha, Transco Zone 4, and SoCal hubs remain lit across both zones.
The overall market read is supportive, Henry Hub and regional power markets are both pricing cooling burn well above normal across a broad geographic footprint. What changes the picture: a confirmed trough dropping through the northern tier into the Midwest would be the first credible challenge to the locked central ridge. For the Northeast, the key question is whether the current negative trend in the model runs continues, which would compress the anomaly toward normal over the next few updates. For ERCOT and the South/West, the delta trajectory bears watching, three consecutive runs in the same direction would signal the back-end erosion is locking in rather than oscillating.