If you have pulled into a gas station over the past week, you've certainly wondered what is going on. In one day last week, prices jumped about 30 cents at many stations. 

But now, it's falling. 

So, is that something we can expect, falling prices, or is it an anomaly? 

To get to your gas tank, crude oil has to be processed, and last week, the Whiting Refinery in northern Indiana near Chicago went down due to flooding. 

"The largest refinery in the Midwest, we're talking about 440,00 barrels of oil every day, run through this plant, it's a major outage," said GasBuddy.com's Patrick De Haan. 

That supply hit quickly became a wallet hit, with De Haan saying the result was some of the most severe increases that we've seen for any states so far in 2025. 

Pittsburgh, along with other parts of the country, was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

"That pipeline does traverse through Ohio and does connect into western Pennsylvania," he said. "Without a doubt, that's probably exactly what happened in western Pennsylvania." 

That outage led to 30-cent increases nearly overnight, but that refinery is resuming operations. 

"I do expect that, where prices jumped up significantly, we should start to see more relief," De Haan said. 

In fact, just from last Thursday, our prices have dropped about 20 cents per gallon, but De Haan said that if you can, hold off on rushing to the pump. 

"Don't be in a rush to fill up, we'll continue going down and that's a trend that should persist into the fall," he said. 

He also said that overall, he expects this Labor Day Weekend to be the cheapest since 2020. 

While he is optimistic that prices will drop further, traditionally, when the summer driving season ends in September, and we revert to winter blend gas, prices fall. 

That's where we are heading, but how far is not predictable. We're still in hurricane season, and who knows what impacts politics and wars will have.