With prices already soft given a comfortable shoulder season supply cushion, significant warmer trends from weather models over the weekend sent natural gas futures tumbling in early trading Monday.

NGI Morning Natural Gas Price & Markets Coverage

The May Nymex contract was down 14.0 cents to $2.076/MMBtu at around 8:40 a.m. ET.

Forecasts shifted “strongly warmer” over the weekend, with the American and European models both showing a loss of more than 20 heating degree days (HDD), according to NatGasWeather.

At this point in the season, HDD totals “don’t have as big of an impact on demand, so the damage of losing 20-plus HDD isn’t as significant as core winter,” NatGasWeather said.

However, the warmer shift likely contributed to downward pressure on prices in after hours trading as the market returned from...