Chester, NY 10918 Frost Dates
Frost dates for Chester, NY, ZIP 10918
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 05/01, roughly 246 days out. The first fall frost typically arrives around 10/11, about 163 frost-free days later.
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 Chester, not a forecast for this year.
What to do before the first frost
Zone 6b around Chester has about 6 weeks left before the first fall frost — that's the usual window to get a cold frame up if you want to keep harvesting past it.
The actual range around Chester's last frost
05/01 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Plant by 04/18 and you're betting against frost in roughly 9 years out of 10. 05/17 is the safer bet, historically only a 1-in-10 chance of frost that late.
How Chester compares
At roughly 163 frost-free days, Chester places 31,383 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within NY, it ranks 937 of 1,951.
Learn more
zone vs. frost date explains why Zone 6b and Chester's frost date answer different questions, and the frost range explains how to read the range around Chester's dates instead of trusting one.