Gasoline Prices Are Highest in 9 Years This Thanksgiving in MN

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It'll cost you way more to head over the river and through the woods if you're driving this Thanksgiving in Minnesota.

Prices seem to be increasing just everywhere in the Land of 10,000 Lakes these days (stop me if you've heard this one before)... due to the pandemic, right? In fact, Minnesota's Department of Employment and Economic Development said earlier this week that inflation had risen to 6.2 percent this year.

And one of the more visible places where prices have increased in Minnesota is at the gas pumps, where, according to this MarketWatch story, we're just pennies under the highest price EVER as we head into Thanksgiving.

U.S. drivers are paying over 60% more for a gallon of regular gasoline than a year ago, but they’ll likely narrowly escape having to pay the highest Thanksgiving price on record.

MarketWatch said, on average nationally, we're paying $1.30 MORE for a gallon of gas this year than we did heading into Thanksgiving in 2020. And, they're very close to the highest price EVER on the Thanksgiving holiday, which was set back in 2012.

That pain at the pump isn't quite as bad here in Minnesota, though. The US Energy Information Administration says the price for a gallon of unleaded is currently at $3.16 (nationally, it's closer to $3.41.) According to GasBuddy, as of Friday, November 19, prices here in and around Rochester are a little under that, selling from $3.09 to $3.14.

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That's still over $1.20 more per gallon than we were paying last Thanksgiving when prices around Minnesota were at $1.91 a gallon. And, it's the highest price we've also paid for gasoline heading into the Thanksgiving holiday since 2012, when we were paying $3.27 a gallon here in the North Star State.

MarketWatch says there could be some relief on the way, as US leaders consider tapping the strategic petroleum reserve, which could help curb rising oil prices.

Speaking of gas prices, do you remember what they were when you first started driving? Keep scrolling to check out how much a gallon of gasoline cost the year you got your driver's license!

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LOOK: See how much gasoline cost the year you started driving

To find out more about how has the price of gas changed throughout the years, Stacker ran the numbers on the cost of a gallon of gasoline for each of the last 84 years. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (released in April 2020), we analyzed the average price for a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline from 1976 to 2020 along with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for unleaded regular gasoline from 1937 to 1976, including the absolute and inflation-adjusted prices for each year.

Read on to explore the cost of gas over time and rediscover just how much a gallon was when you first started driving.