Old Town, ME 04461 Frost Dates
04461, near Old Town, ME: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 05/13, roughly 258 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 09/28, roughly 137 days after the last spring frost.
Zone 5a (-20 to -15°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 Old Town, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
Old Town's growing season runs out in roughly 4 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 Old Town's last frost
05/13 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/30 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/28 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Old Town against the rest of the dataset
About 137 days separate Old Town's last and first frost, putting it 37,502 of 40,283 ZIP codes nationally. Within ME, it ranks 383 of 456.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 04461: zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 5a and Old Town's frost date answer different questions, and the frost range, on how to read the range around Old Town's dates instead of trusting one.