What if a polar vortex blacks out the Texas grid?
A polar-vortex ERCOT collapse spikes Texas spot power and Henry Hub as gas wells and wellheads freeze off, feeding through to ammonia/fertilizer costs at the margin. Direct analogue: Winter Storm Uri (Feb 2021), when ERCOT prices hit the $9,000/MWh cap and gas spiked, bankrupting Brazos and Griddy. Forward angle: post-Uri weatherization helps, but ERCOT's energy-only market and surging datacenter/crypto load mean scarcity pricing can still gap violently — the local power/gas spike, not the tiny EUR leg, is the trade.
how we built this number — every step
The class rate is measured from our dated, sourced event library (decade-normalized Poisson — the full table is public at base_rates.json). The variant’s share within its class is the analyst’s editorial call, published so you can audit it. A wider range means thinner precedent. Full recipe: methodology · scored at Reality Check.
The butterfly cascade
How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.
Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving
Our model's odds (gold) over time vs the crowd's (Polymarket, blue), from the past toward the 0–6 months horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. The gold path is an illustrative reconstruction anchored to today's estimate — real dated events, not a live re-estimate history.
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a mixed shock. A deep-freeze polar vortex collapses ERCOT generation, triggering days-long Texas blackouts and emergency power-price caps. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Natural gas ▲ · European energy ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.
If it happens — the markets it would move
Biggest moves first. Projected moves are cascade-model priors; hist A–B% = what comparable past events actually did (measured abnormal returns), and model prior · unmeasured marks markets with no analogue backing yet. Tap any market for its price history.
| Market | Class | Projected move | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Natural gas NGon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +0.7% hist -10.14–+6.55% · other way +6.89% (n=6) |
| 2 | EUR/USD EURUSDon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | FX | ▼ -0.2% hist -0.73–+0.37% · other way +0.57% (n=6) |
Probable recommendation
Why we may diverge from history
Trust the cascade long on NG: the -3.8% history is off-channel — analogues are Iran missiles, Russian transit, Venezuela, not weather-driven demand; an ERCOT polar-vortex blackout is precisely the gas-demand shock those windows miss.
Historical precedent — what analogous events actually did
Across 14 analogous events (overlap‑weighted), as abnormal returns — market beta stripped, so it's the event's own effect, not the market backdrop. Shown at 20 days (persistent) and 5 days (immediate); ↺ fades = the two horizons disagree. Confidence = consistency × sample × significance.
| Asset | History says | Abnormal (20d · 5d) | Hit | n | Confidence | vs cascade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin BTC | SHORT | -2.5% · 5d -0.0% | 83% | 5 | 0.34 | · |
| NG NG | SHORT | -10.8% · 5d -3.7% | 68% | 11 | 0.33 | ⚠ differs |
| High-yield credit HYG | SHORT | -0.1% · 5d +0.1% ↺ fades | 55% | 9 | 0.07 | · |
| Gold XAU | SHORT | -1.1% · 5d -0.3% | 52% | 11 | 0.04 | · |
| EURUSD EURUSD | SHORT | -0.6% · 5d +0.4% ↺ fades | 50% | 10 | 0.00 | ✓ matches cascade |
| Volatility VIX | SHORT | -1.0% · 5d -1.4% | 44% | 11 | 0.00 | · |
| US dollar DXY | LONG | +0.1% · 5d -0.5% ↺ fades | 45% | 14 | 0.00 | · |
| 10y yield DGS10 | LONG | +9bp · 5d +6bp | 48% | 14 | 0.00 | · |
Why this probability
ERCOT winter stress recurs, but days-long blackout needs extreme vortex inside 6mo. A base‑rate‑anchored prior, continuously scored against what actually happens — not a forecast.