Chatham, NY 01236 Frost Dates
01236, near Chatham, NY: the frost window
Around 05/07 is the usual last spring frost, about 252 days away. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/03, roughly 147 days after the last spring frost.
Chatham sits in USDA Zone 5b (-15 to -10°F average annual minimum). The dates above are NOAA's 1991-2020 normal at the nearest reporting station, a 30-year average, not a forecast.
Stretching the season past the first frost
Chatham's growing season runs out in roughly 5 weeks — a cold frame or greenhouse kit is the usual way to keep cool-weather crops going past the first frost.
The actual range around Chatham's last frost
05/07 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/26 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/21 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Chatham against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 147 frost-free days, Chatham places 35,926 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within NY, it ranks 1,615 of 1,951.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 01236: the frost range, on how to read the range around Chatham's dates instead of trusting one, and local microclimates, on what one yard in Chatham can differ from the 01236 normal.