Peabody, MA 01949 Frost Dates
01949, near Peabody, MA: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 05/03, roughly 248 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/09, roughly 157 days after the last spring frost.
Zone 6b (-5 to 0°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 Peabody, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
Peabody'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 Peabody's last frost
05/03 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/20 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/20 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Peabody against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 157 frost-free days, Peabody places 33,208 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within MA, it ranks 588 of 712.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 01949: zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 6b and Peabody's frost date answer different questions, and the frost range, on how to read the range around Peabody's dates instead of trusting one.