Saco, ME 04005 Frost Dates
04005, near Saco, ME: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 05/09, roughly 254 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/03, roughly 146 days after the last spring frost.
Saco 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
Saco'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 Saco's last frost
05/09 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/28 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/22 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Saco against the rest of the dataset
About 146 days separate Saco's last and first frost, putting it 36,026 of 40,283 ZIP codes nationally. Within ME, it ranks 341 of 456.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 04005: the frost range, on how to read the range around Saco's dates instead of trusting one, and local microclimates, on what one yard in Saco can differ from the 04005 normal.