Harvesting moved rapidly in much of the Southeast. Drought areas expanded in the Delta. Hail destroyed some Plains cotton. Warehouses busy in Arizona. Beneficial rain fell in California. U.S. upland classing reached 4.8 million RB.

Cotton futures settled mixed on heavy volume Monday, down eight to up 31 points in current marketing year contracts.

Spot December was the only loser, closing down eight points to 68.45 cents, in the lower third of its 141-point range from down 47 points at 68.06 to up 94 points to 69.47 cents. The Goldman index fund roll began Monday and will continue through Friday. December options expire Friday.

March settled flat at 69.10 cents, while December 2017 edged up 26 points to finish at 69 cents.

Volume jumped to an estimated 59,882 lots from 27,069 lots the previous session when spreads accounted for 17,284 lots or 64%, EFP 158 lots and EFS 42 lots. Options volume totaled 3,623 calls and 3,626 puts.

Fieldwork continued uninterrupted across much of the Southeast last week and harvesting advanced at a rapid pace, USDAΆs Agricultural Marketing Service reported Friday in a weekly cotton review.

Yields were good in Georgia with per-acre yields of 900 to 1,400 pounds reported on irrigated ground and 650 to 750 pounds on dryland that received timely rainfall. Reduced yields were reported in drier areas.

Reports on damage from Hurricane Matthew indicated that some producers along coastal areas that bore the brunt of the storm lost up to 200 to 400 pounds of lint per acre, up to half their anticipated yields.

In South Alabama, boll-rot and hard-locked bolls in the lower canopy of some fields were attributed to a variety of factors, including disease, insect damage and wet weather earlier in the growing season.

Some producers in North Carolina estimated yield losses of 125 to 175 pounds per acre to the hurricane. Harvesting was slowed in some fields in South Carolina where the hurricane blew down cotton plants.

Temperatures in the North Delta topped seasonal averages by up to 12 degrees with no rainfall reported. Western Tennessee and most of Central and eastern Arkansas had slipped into moderate drought conditions. Many producers continued to report good-to-excellent irrigated yields; a few in southern Arkansas picked four bales per acre.

In the South Delta, extreme drought expanded in Central Mississippi and Northeast Louisiana. Yields were reported above average in most cases. Many Delta producers have completed the harvest. Several gins in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi completed operations for the season.

Muddy roads prevented access to some fields and an early estimate of the acreage where hail damaged cotton that was open and nearing harvest in the Texas High Pains counties of southern Lynn and northern Dawson east and west of OΆDonnell, said the Lubbock-based Plains Cotton Growers, Inc.

The midweek storm destroyed some cotton in what was “a devastating loss for those producers and their ginners,” Steve Verett, PCG executive vice president, said in a PCG newsletter. It was one of the most significant late-season hail events since a 2010 storm affected tens of thousands of acres primarily in Yoakum, Terry, Lubbock and Lynn counties.

Sunny skies prevailed in Arizona where harvesting and ginning advanced and warehouses were busy shipping and receiving cotton. A series of storms from the Pacific Ocean brought beneficial rainfall to most of California. Most of the seed cotton was harvested and stored in modules.

U.S. upland cotton classed for the week ended Thursday of 1.139 million running bales, up from 1.033 million the prior week, boosted the seasonΆs total to 4.838 million RB, the latest USDA weekly figures showed.

The upland total was 32% of the October crop estimate and up from 3.9 million RB graded through the corresponding period last season. Cotton meeting quality requirements for tendering on futures contracts totaled 72.7% for the week and 70.9% for the season. A year ago, tenderable cotton for the season was 58.1%.

Pima or extra-long staple cotton classing rose to 39,154 RB for the week and to 90,357 RB for the season, hiking the U.S. all-cotton count to 4.928 million RB, up from 3.995 million a year ago.

Futures open interest declined 1,169 lots Friday to 248,851, with DecemberΆs down 4,458 lots to 110,736 and MarchΆs up 2,674 lots to 94,435. Cert stocks grew 2,638 bales to 42,195. There were 3,078 newly certified bales and 440 bales decertified.