From Texas to Mississippi to South Carolina, gas prices are dropping to some of the lowest rates the country has seen in months, giving Americans a long-awaited break at the pump.
"I am a college student, so every penny counts. I would say it's not awful. I like the direction it's going. I mean, I remember when it used to be like $4 a gallon, so seeing it under $3 is a lot more comforting," said Alana Hunt of Texas.
On Tuesday, the national average for a gallon of gas is $3.26 according to AAA— which is 19¢ cheaper than last month and 50¢ cheaper than a year ago.
Texas, Tennessee, Alabama and seven more states have gas prices averaging less than $3 per gallon.
Patrick De Haan is the head of petroleum analysis at the tech company GasBuddy, which crowd-sources gas prices across the country.
"We could see probably close to half of the nation states, maybe even more than that falling below the $3 per gallon mark as we continue to get into the fall. And I would say that by the end of the year, we may peak at maybe 30 or 35 states that get below that $3 a gallon mark," De Haan said.
He says that some of the factors for the drops in gas prices include: a drop in demand for gas due to inflationary pressures keeping more Americans closer to home, and the fact that gas prices typically go down at the end of summer every year.
"Now, there's a couple of things that could kind of change that trajectory, kind of highlighting right now the uncertainty of Mother Nature. We do have Tropical Storm Francine, which shouldn't have much impact on gas prices, but we are in the peak of hurricane season. And so storms can cause outages at refineries, which can impact gas prices. So that's kind of one of the wild cards, but I do think as we get into October and into November, things will continue to slowly look better and better," De Haan added.
Along with gas prices, online grocery prices saw a significant drop in August. Online grocery prices fell 3.7% compared to last month — marking the largest month to month decline since 2014 – according to Adobe Digital Price Index.
All of this comes as the Federal Reserve is expected to deliver a rate cut before the end of the month.
