Frozen gas pumps

I mentioned in the other cold thread that the pumps where Dana works froze themselves last night. I guess most everyone had that problem as a lot of stations were closed this morning. 

Is this a new thing with the higher ethanol content of regular gas? There aren't many places that sell E85 around me, so these are all regular stains with regular winter mix that have frozen up. 

I honestly don't think I've heard of it happening before, certainly never considered it myself. Has anyone run into it personally or have some science as to why, other than it was below zero and well into the negative 30s after wind chill?

The diesel pumps at work were working but it would take about 10 min to pump 10 gallons. So I don't know if it is just gasoline

Alcohol is an anti freeze.    In fact it was use in cars from the factory  .

BlindPirate said:

The diesel pumps at work were working but it would take about 10 min to pump 10 gallons. So I don't know if it is just gasoline

diesel turns to a gel at low temps. I can remember running a mixture of diesel and kero when I was driving commercial so that the truck would start and run all day. I doubt it would work with today's all electronic trucks with def, but I am talking all mechanical injection here.

Likely has a suction problem at really low temps, like it's pulling air in a severely cold and shrunken fitting.  Pumps always work here, where berkeleying cold is pretty normal.

Pumps are mechanical things and they may not like the cold.

I've seen diesel gel many times in the past. I've had almost empty tanks of old gas freeze. I've had fuel lines freeze and pop.  I've never seen pumps stop pumping gas until this week, so I thought it was worth mentioning when 6 stations had their pumps freeze on them overnight when we weren't even the coldest people around.

You may have identified the stations with the most water in their gas...

In reply to (not) WilD (Matt) :

All were Sunoco stations except one, now that you mention it. 

Um...

Tanks are underground enough that water should not freeze.  The cold doesn't go that deep.

The pumps are above ground.

In Russia gas pumps for you