If properly installed and working, the hydrant should not be full of water. Hydrants have the valve at their bottom, below the frost line. Open the handle and the supply valve at the bottom opens and the water comes up the pipe and out the nozzle. When turned off, the bottom supply valve closes and the column of water remaining is allowed to drain out a vent hole at the bottom of the hydrant (proper installation requires a small gravel drain bed for this to occur). if the hydrant is currently full of frozen water, that is very suggestive that the bottom valve is not closing properly, leakage water has filled/saturated any drain bed available and also filled the vertical pipe with water that has now frozen. There are rebuild kits for hydrants, the handle is removed and the actuating rod pulled out vertically to expose the replaceable parts, but you will likely have to wait until things thaw to accomplish this.

Thanks formulaross. I just found it very strange that I couldn't pull up that handle. Never had that problem before. I've turned off the water supply to it and haven't heard the pump go on since. Fortunately, we can probably do without that hydrant until the weather warms up. Thanks for the info about the rebuild kits. Do you think that's do-able for the average homeowner to do him/herself? Thanks for your help!

It is possible for yard hydrants to freeze, if the water table is higher than it should be. If by chance waters been bubbling up around your hydrant for awhile, may be the case. Happened to me.

Thanks fireweed. Well, it was about 40F today and is going to get colder. So I turned the supply to the hydrant on in the basement and went out and bingo! ......I could pull the handle all the way up and water poured out. Does this mean it WAS frozen? And this would happen if the valves were defective at the bottom? And could it also happen if what fireweed suggested could happen, did happen? I'm thinking that if the water table was high, it wouldn't cause water to enter the hydrant though, right? Water would freeze around it, but not in it, right?

If it were the case, that the valve is defective, would there be signs of this when the weather wasn't freezing? Sorry I don't know much about this. Dang......I didn't pay attention to how soon the water poured out when I pulled the handle up. If there weren't that slight delay, would that mean water was at the top of the pipe already? I think it came out immediately. I'm thinking there would be a slight delay, if the valve was working properly, right?

Thanks everyone for your input!

The water in the pipe is supposed to flow out of the bottom of the pipe into a small hole full of gravel at the bottom, by gravity, after the valve is closed. High water table, leaky pipe, gravel filled with mud, or whatever can prevent proper action. I tried to rebuild ours but it was too corroded.