Amherst Town, MA 01355 Frost Dates
01355, near Amherst Town, MA: the frost window
Around 05/04 is the usual last spring frost, about 249 days away. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/08, roughly 157 days after the last spring frost.
Zone 5b (-15 to -10°F average annual minimum) comes from the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map; the frost dates above are the 1991-2020 normal at the nearest reporting NOAA station for Amherst Town, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
Amherst Town's growing season runs out in roughly 6 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 Amherst Town's last frost
05/04 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/23 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/17 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Amherst Town against the rest of the dataset
About 157 days separate Amherst Town's last and first frost, putting it 33,211 of 40,283 ZIP codes nationally. Within MA, it ranks 590 of 712.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 01355: local microclimates, on what one yard in Amherst Town can differ from the 01355 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 5b and Amherst Town's frost date answer different questions.