NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Crude oil below sixty dollars a barrel and gasoline below two-and-a-half bucks a gallon! Who would have thought the fact we are dipping below levels that lofty could merit exclamation points and feelings of relief?

The big question now is how much further will prices drop?

One of the big worries that helped drive oil up to 70 dollars a barrel in late August and early September, when the big booster was the hurricanes, was the fear of a cold winter in the Northeast which would ramp up demand.

So far in New York City many of us were walking around in shirt sleeves over the weekend as amateur pundits opined that the big problem for marathon runners would be weather that was "too warm."

So the fear of gargantuan heating bills that force us to choose between "gifting" our spouse with a nice watch or a nice T-shirt seems a long way off, if not downright goofy.

But we all know we are still in the transitional throes of autumn and come January and February we really could get hit with icy blasts. So in terms of oil and the consumer we are not out of the woods, or perhaps I should say the ice box, just yet.

For now it's lovely to see prices fall, and to wonder if we might not see a repeat of years gone by where the spike up in oil was followed by a plummet back toward reality.

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Kathleen Hays is economics correspondent for CNN. Read more of her columns here.