Leicester, NY 14481 Frost Dates
14481, near Leicester, NY: the frost window
The last spring frost here typically falls around 04/30, about 245 days from today. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/17, roughly 170 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 Leicester, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
Leicester's growing season runs out in roughly 7 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 Leicester's last frost
04/30 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/17 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/13 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Leicester against the rest of the dataset
About 170 days separate Leicester's last and first frost, putting it 29,197 of 40,283 ZIP codes nationally. Within NY, it ranks 776 of 1,951.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 14481: zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 6a and Leicester's frost date answer different questions, and the frost range, on how to read the range around Leicester's dates instead of trusting one.