Watervliet, NY 12189 Frost Dates
12189, near Watervliet, NY: the frost window
Around 04/19 is the usual last spring frost, about 234 days away. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/26, roughly 190 days after the last spring frost.
Zone 6a (-10 to -5°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 Watervliet, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
Watervliet'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 Watervliet'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.
Watervliet against the rest of the dataset
About 190 days separate Watervliet's last and first frost, putting it 21,097 of 40,283 ZIP codes nationally. Within NY, it ranks 367 of 1,951.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 12189: local microclimates, on what one yard in Watervliet can differ from the 12189 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 6a and Watervliet's frost date answer different questions.