Find your first fall frost date
The first fall frost ends the season for tomatoes, peppers and every other warm-season crop. Enter your ZIP code to find the nearest weather station and the date its first 32 °F night usually arrives, or open your state for every station NOAA reports.
Looking for the last spring frost? Look it up by ZIP code →
Nearest station with thirty years of frost data to the centre of that ZIP code.
- First fall frost
- Frost-free days
- Average last frost
- Safe date (10% risk)
- Early date (90% risk)
How to read the date
The first frost date is an average: in half of the years between 1991 and 2020 the first 32 °F night had arrived by then, and in the other half it came later. Treat the week before it as the time to bring in anything that cannot take a frost.
Tomatoes and peppers are damaged by a single night at freezing. Fruit that has started to color will finish ripening indoors; small green fruit usually will not. Frost-free days is the stretch between the average last spring frost and this date, and it is the number to hold against a variety's days to maturity.
Every figure is for the weather station, not for your garden. Low spots, where cold air settles on a still night, frost first; a wall facing south or a site near a large lake can hold off a week or more.
Where the numbers come from
The dates are NOAA's U.S. Climate Normals for 1991 to 2020, computed by the National Centers for Environmental Information for every station with thirty years of daily minimum temperatures. ZIP codes are matched to the nearest such station within 150 km using U.S. Census Bureau ZIP Code Tabulation Area centroids. The same stations give the last spring frost dates on the frost-dates page.
Every state
Median first fall frost across each state's stations, with the spread between its earliest and latest station. Open a state for the station list with both dates.
| Earliest to latest | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | 118 | Nov 9 | Oct 27 – Jan 6 |
| Alaska | 163 | Sep 22 | Aug 21 – Nov 9 |
| Arizona | 174 | Nov 12 | Sep 15 – Jan 9 |
| Arkansas | 112 | Nov 6 | Oct 20 – Nov 18 |
| California | 332 | Dec 1 | Sep 10 – Feb 1 |
| Colorado | 210 | Oct 4 | Sep 2 – Oct 26 |
| Connecticut | 23 | Oct 17 | Oct 4 – Nov 6 |
| Delaware | 7 | Nov 4 | Oct 30 – Nov 14 |
| District of Columbia | 0 | — | — |
| Florida | 139 | Jan 6 | Nov 12 – Jan 20 |
| Georgia | 126 | Nov 12 | Oct 19 – Dec 26 |
| Hawaii | 2 | Dec 1 | Dec 1 – Jan 24 |
| Idaho | 127 | Sep 29 | Sep 2 – Nov 5 |
| Illinois | 170 | Oct 21 | Oct 7 – Nov 5 |
| Indiana | 117 | Oct 21 | Oct 9 – Nov 10 |
| Iowa | 150 | Oct 10 | Sep 28 – Oct 27 |
| Kansas | 176 | Oct 20 | Oct 4 – Nov 1 |
| Kentucky | 97 | Oct 25 | Oct 10 – Nov 9 |
| Louisiana | 98 | Nov 24 | Nov 5 – Jan 9 |
| Maine | 82 | Oct 2 | Sep 13 – Oct 26 |
| Maryland | 43 | Nov 2 | Oct 9 – Nov 26 |
| Massachusetts | 69 | Oct 14 | Oct 1 – Nov 15 |
| Michigan | 211 | Oct 11 | Sep 9 – Nov 5 |
| Minnesota | 179 | Oct 2 | Sep 8 – Oct 28 |
| Mississippi | 94 | Nov 11 | Oct 26 – Dec 14 |
| Missouri | 171 | Oct 24 | Oct 8 – Nov 9 |
| Montana | 216 | Sep 21 | Sep 2 – Oct 15 |
| Nebraska | 184 | Oct 7 | Sep 11 – Oct 21 |
| Nevada | 109 | Oct 4 | Sep 11 – Dec 24 |
| New Hampshire | 54 | Oct 4 | Sep 18 – Oct 19 |
| New Jersey | 48 | Oct 27 | Oct 11 – Nov 22 |
| New Mexico | 175 | Oct 17 | Sep 7 – Nov 18 |
| New York | 176 | Oct 12 | Sep 9 – Nov 25 |
| North Carolina | 187 | Nov 4 | Oct 4 – Dec 22 |
| North Dakota | 125 | Sep 27 | Sep 17 – Oct 9 |
| Ohio | 130 | Oct 22 | Oct 8 – Nov 12 |
| Oklahoma | 193 | Nov 1 | Oct 17 – Nov 15 |
| Oregon | 172 | Oct 22 | Sep 5 – Dec 27 |
| Pennsylvania | 160 | Oct 19 | Sep 27 – Nov 17 |
| Rhode Island | 11 | Oct 20 | Oct 8 – Nov 13 |
| South Carolina | 103 | Nov 9 | Oct 17 – Dec 30 |
| South Dakota | 166 | Oct 1 | Sep 10 – Oct 13 |
| Tennessee | 148 | Oct 29 | Oct 1 – Nov 16 |
| Texas | 476 | Nov 16 | Oct 15 – Jan 8 |
| Utah | 169 | Oct 5 | Sep 1 – Nov 20 |
| Vermont | 45 | Oct 1 | Sep 13 – Oct 20 |
| Virginia | 125 | Oct 28 | Oct 3 – Nov 26 |
| Washington | 154 | Oct 20 | Sep 4 – Nov 29 |
| West Virginia | 99 | Oct 20 | Oct 2 – Nov 4 |
| Wisconsin | 204 | Oct 6 | Sep 18 – Oct 29 |
| Wyoming | 129 | Sep 24 | Aug 28 – Oct 10 |
First frost dates by USDA hardiness zone
Hardiness zones follow the coldest winter night, and the first fall frost only loosely follows the zone. The table gives the median first frost across ZIP codes in each half zone, the range that covers the middle 80% of them, and the median last spring frost for comparison. Your own ZIP code above is the better answer.
| Zone | Median first fall frost | Typical range | Median last frost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zone 3b | Sep 24 | Sep 8 – Oct 1 | May 17 |
| Zone 4a | Sep 28 | Sep 20 – Oct 4 | May 13 |
| Zone 4b | Oct 1 | Sep 18 – Oct 8 | May 8 |
| Zone 5a | Oct 4 | Sep 23 – Oct 13 | May 4 |
| Zone 5b | Oct 10 | Sep 29 – Oct 19 | May 1 |
| Zone 6a | Oct 16 | Oct 3 – Oct 24 | Apr 29 |
| Zone 6b | Oct 22 | Oct 9 – Oct 29 | Apr 23 |
| Zone 7a | Oct 25 | Oct 15 – Nov 2 | Apr 16 |
| Zone 7b | Nov 1 | Oct 24 – Nov 14 | Apr 6 |
| Zone 8a | Nov 6 | Oct 30 – Nov 14 | Mar 29 |
| Zone 8b | Nov 13 | Nov 2 – Nov 23 | Mar 18 |
| Zone 9a | Nov 25 | Nov 14 – Dec 9 | Mar 3 |
| Zone 9b | Dec 14 | Nov 27 – Jan 4 | Feb 2 |
Zones 10 and warmer are left out. Frost there is rare, and the nearest weather station with frost records is often far from the garden, so a zone figure would mislead.
Zones from the 2023 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map ZIP code data by the PRISM Climate Group, Oregon State University. This table is derived from that data and is not the official USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map.