June 15 (Reuters) - ICE cotton futures on Thursday fell over two percent to their lowest since December on prospects of robust new crop yields due to favorable weather in the top growing regions of the natural fiber.

The most-active December cotton contract on ICE futures U.S. settled down 1.48 cents, or 2.09 percent, at 69.47 cents per lb, marking the biggest single day percentage loss since September 2016.

Prices earlier touched 69.03 cents per lb, the lowest since the end of December.

"The export sales were almost identical to the last three weeks ... so that didn't really drag it down as much. They were lower but not enough to overcome the weather," said Gabriel Crivorot, analyst at Societe Generale in New York.

"The plantings have been going well in the U.S., China, and India. The weather has continuously been moderate to good in all the planting areas."

U.S. Department of Agriculture's weekly export sales report showed sales of upland cotton for 2016/2017 totaled 69,400 running bales of cotton in the week ended June 8, down 16 percent from the previous week.

"Total net export sales and shipments were modestly and significantly lower w/w, respectively, but remained ahead of the weekly pace required to meet the USDA's 14.5 million bale export target," Louis Rose, co-founder and director of research and analytics at Rose Commodity Group, said in a note.

* A stronger dollar further pressured prices. The dollar index was up 0.50 percent.
* The July cotton contract on ICE Futures U.S. also fell over 2 percent to the lowest since end-December.
* The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index, which tracks 19 commodities, was down 0.14 percent.
* Total futures market volume rose by 19,331 to 57,473 lots. Data showed total open interest fell 1,367 to 233,176 contracts in the previous session.

(Reporting by Swati Verma in Bengaluru; Editing by Chris Reese)