Auburn, ME 04040 Frost Dates
04040, near Auburn, ME: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 05/05, roughly 250 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/05, roughly 151 days after the last spring frost.
Auburn sits in USDA Zone 5a (-20 to -15°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
Auburn'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 Auburn's last frost
05/05 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 05/17 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Auburn against the rest of the dataset
About 151 days separate Auburn's last and first frost, putting it 34,952 of 40,283 ZIP codes nationally. Within ME, it ranks 246 of 456.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 04040: zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 5a and Auburn's frost date answer different questions, and the frost range, on how to read the range around Auburn's dates instead of trusting one.