May 29 (Reuters) - ICE cotton futures traded limit up and touched a four-year high on Tuesday, boosted by mill fixations and amid dry weather in Texas, a major growing state.

ICE cotton contract for July expiry CTc1 CTN8 settled up 4 cents, or 4.5 percent, at 93.21 cents per lb. Cotton futures CTc1 traded within a range of 89.57 and 93.21 cents a lb, a peak since May 2014, following the U.S. Memorial day holiday on Monday.

"A bullish Chinese market and West Texas baking in near record heat, plus mills being trapped with fixations. Those are the factors combining to this explosive move," said Peter Egli, director of risk management at British merchant Plexus Cotton.

The contract for December expiry CTZ8 also settled limit up, jumping 4.6 percent to 90.65 cents a lb, an all-time high for the contract.

"The ongoing drought in West Texas is causing an issue for the largest concentration of the crop in the U.S.," said Gabriel Crivorot, an analyst at Societe Generale(PA:SOGN) in New York.

"We just had a long weekend, and it didn't get any better and that's why it shot up that much."

The market was also closely monitoring subtropical depression Alberto, currently moving through central Alabama, which was forecast to degenerate into a remnant low by Tuesday evening. has put the Delta/Southeast crop behind. With rain scheduled for the next several days, many fields perhaps as much as 25-30 percent of cotton acreage will not be planted to well into June," Ron Lee, general manager at McCleskey Cotton in Bronwood, Georgia, said in a note.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) warned Alberto could deliver rains of 2-6 inches (6-15 cm), with as much as 12 inches (30 cm) in some areas in Alabama and northern Florida through Tuesday night.

ICE Futures U.S. said daily trading limit for all cotton no. 2 futures contract delivery months will expand to 5 cents per pound above and below the prior day settlement price effective with the start of trading for Wednesday. farmers in Kansas and Oklahoma are planting more land with cotton than they have for decades as they ditch wheat, attracted by relatively high cotton prices and the crop's ability to withstand drought. futures market volume fell by 14,328 to 35,479 lots. Data showed total open interest gained 4 to 303,729 contracts in the previous session.

Certificated cotton stocks CERT-COT-STX deliverable as of May 25 totaled 87,541 480-lb bales, up from 84,389 in the previous session.