Seemingly relentless warmth in the January temperature outlook, reinforced by milder overnight forecast trends, kept the pressure on natural gas futures in early trading Friday. 

NGI Morning Natural Gas Price & Markets Coverage

After a 45.2-cent sell-off in the previous session, the February Nymex contract was off another 9.2 cents to $3.628/MMBtu at around 8:45 a.m. ET.

Starting from an already “exceptionally warm and bearish” outlook, both the American and European weather models trended notably warmer overnight in terms of degree day totals, according to NatGasWeather.

“To our view, the overnight weather data couldn’t be more bearish,” NatGasWeather said.

National heating degree days (HDD) for the 15-day projection period were down more than 110 HDD versus norms, equating to nearly 180 Bcf less demand,...