The cost of filling up the car is rising in the wake of soaring crude and by this weekend, pump prices may race past the highs for all of 2009, according to The Associated Press.

Tracing the ascension of crude prices, up 14 percent since mid-December, energy prices across the board are catching up.

It's part economic and part meteorologic.

Vicious pockets of cold stretched from the Northeast to the South, where farmers in the Florida panhandle tried to save tomato and strawberry crops. Four deaths in Tennessee were blamed on low temperatures.

The frigid blast has squeezed heating oil supplies in some areas during a year when demand had been very weak.

Falling supplies in recent weeks have contributed to prices driven higher by the falling dollar. When the dollar falls, investors holding stronger currency can essentially buy more dollar-based crude and they have, doubling oil prices last year.