Ellicottville, NY 14731 Frost Dates
14731, near Ellicottville, NY: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 05/17, roughly 262 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/01, roughly 136 days after the last spring frost.
Zone 5b (-15 to -10°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 Ellicottville, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
Ellicottville'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.
Why 05/17 isn't a guarantee
05/17 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 05/01 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/31 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Ellicottville against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 136 frost-free days, Ellicottville places 37,788 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within NY, it ranks 1,835 of 1,951.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 14731: zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 5b and Ellicottville's frost date answer different questions, and the frost range, on how to read the range around Ellicottville's dates instead of trusting one.