Here in the Northeast, we’ve been bouncing around between really nice warm weather and crappy cold weather, and I’ve noticed that my grill mostly stops working when it’s cold. Not freezing cold - more like jacket weather or colder. It’s still got gas, and there’s still a flame, but it’s a very weak flame, and won’t get above about 250 degrees no matter how long it sits.
It’s got to be something with my grill specifically, because I’ve grilled in the middle of snowstorms with no problems plenty of times in the past. I’ve even done it with this grill, though not this past winter. This year, for some reason, the grill sat unused for several months.
The vapor pressure of propane drops with temperature. If your grill doesn’t perform as well in colder temperatures as it used to, its plumbing may have become partially clogged or blocked, making it more sensitive to that drop in pressure.
One solution is to heat the propane tank to room temperature-ish prior to using it. Another is to clean your grill.
It is also possible you have some water in a low spot in a gas line. If it is cold enough, this can freeze and restrict flow. It may not need to be below freezing, because the gas comes off the bottle below ambient temperature.
Another possibility is that your regulator is not regulating properly. If this is the case a new regulator should fix it if you are not familar with how to service them. My sons beer brewer had a similar problem recently and I found a dead pincher bug in the jet going into the burner, easy fix. They crawl down the burner holes into your jet and plug it up.
If you know way ahead of time that you’ll be grilling, bring the propane tank indoors for several hours. It’s massive enough (and with a favorable surface-area-to-volume ratio) so that it ought to stay reasonable warm and provide good supply pressure for the length if time that you’ll be grilling.
I have been plagued by the same problem for years, although I had not noticed it occurring during colder weather, perhaps I was just not alert enough to notice.
It has to do with federal safety regulations, and the fix can be found here:
The low surfaced area is usually hurtful rather than helpful. To supply gas, the liquid in the tank boils which chills the tank. This is a serious problem with small tanks and big burners.
One excellent way to keep the tank warm enough to keep pressure is to place it in a tub of water. This will keep the tank at at least 0C/32F until a thick coating of ice has formed on the tank. You are using latent heat of crystallization (of water) to supply latent heat of vaporization (of propane).
I had the same problem with a Ducane 5 burner and if it dropped below 50 degrees it had a weak flame. I changed regulators and cleaned every burner and igniter none of that helped.
All you have to do is First shut off all of your burners then turn your tank on and let it pressurize for a couple of minutes before trying to light up and then after you have waited then turn on your far left igniter and light the rest from left to right and you will be grilling full power. It works like a charm.
