Cambridge, MA 02140 Frost Dates
02140, near Cambridge, MA: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 04/19, roughly 234 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/23, roughly 185 days after the last spring frost.
Cambridge sits in USDA Zone 6b (-5 to 0°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
Cambridge's growing season runs out in roughly 8 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 Cambridge's last frost
04/19 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/06 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/03 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Cambridge against the rest of the dataset
Cambridge's growing season runs about 185 days, ranking 23,021 of 40,283 US ZIP codes measured here, longest to shortest. Within MA, it ranks 173 of 712.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 02140: local microclimates, on what one yard in Cambridge can differ from the 02140 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 6b and Cambridge's frost date answer different questions.