Milder forecast trends over the Christmas holiday weekend and a less-than-impressive January temperature outlook helped pressure natural gas futures lower in early trading Tuesday.

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The January Nymex contract, set to expire Wednesday, was off 9.9 cents to $2.511/MMBtu at around 8:42 a.m. ET. February was down 9.0 cents to $2.400.

Prior to Christmas Day, weather models trended warmer over the weekend, according to NatGasWeather.

Milder trends were focused around New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, when models saw “not quite as much cool air into the eastern U.S., thereby stalling more impressive demand,” the firm said.

The American model also showed “a warmer pattern attempting to set up across the northern U.S. Jan. 6-9,” NatGasWeather added. The European dataset...