CHARLOTTE -- Over the past six weeks, North Carolina has endured a pipeline rupture that led to gas shortages, and Hurricane Matthew that led to flooding and turned many people's worlds upside down. Gas prices, which spiked after the Colonial Pipeline rupture, are making slow movements downward.

Steve Phillips at AAA Carolinas in Charlotte says the emphasis there is on the word 'slow.' "We are seeing some short outages on the East Coast. We're still recovering from the outage that we saw in Louisiana and we're having some in the Philadelphia area."

As of Friday, the national average price of gas is $2.22. The statewide average is hovering around $2.18. At this time a year ago, the average for unleaded regular was $2.07.