NEW YORK: ICE cotton futures climbed to over a seven-month high on Monday, on news that US President Donald Trump could be discharged from the hospital and concerns of crop damage from Storm Delta, which is soon expected to become a hurricane.

Cotton contracts for December rose 0.54 cent, or 0.8%, at 66.36 cents per lb by 1:02 p.m. EDT (1702 GMT), having earlier risen to their highest since Feb. 25 at 67.14 cents.

"There are forecasts for a potential hurricane to hit the southeast parts of the US, and this is coming at a time when we're harvesting and the bolls are open, so we could suffer some losses," said Jack Scoville, vice president at Chicago-based Price Futures Group.

Tropical Storm Delta is forecast to strengthen into a hurricane and move into the southeastern Gulf of Mexico by Tuesday night, the US National Hurricane Center said.

"Weather has been an issue this year since planting and the crop size is showing what we've thought for months now, that we'll produce less cotton this year than we committed last season," Louis Barbera, partner and analyst at VLM Commodities Ltd said in a note on Sunday.

Cotton prices posted losses on Friday after markets were rattled on news of Trump testing positive for coronavirus.

Speculators increased their net long position in cotton futures in the week to Sept. 29 by 456 contracts to 42,723. Total futures market volume rose by 834 to 24,995 lots. Data showed total open interest gained 971 to 224,724 contracts in the previous session.