Horseheads, NY 14838 Frost Dates
Horseheads, NY: when does the frost end?
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 05/06, roughly 251 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/11, roughly 158 days after the last spring frost.
Horseheads sits in USDA Zone 5b (-15 to -10°F average annual minimum). The dates above are NOAA's 1991-2020 normal at the nearest reporting station, a 30-year average, not a forecast.
Stretching the season past the first frost
With roughly 6 weeks until Horseheads's first fall frost, a row cover or cold frame is what stretches the last few weeks of harvest here.
How much risk comes with planting early here
05/06 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/24 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/21 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Horseheads against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 158 frost-free days, Horseheads places 32,959 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within NY, it ranks 1,160 of 1,951.
Learn more
Before leaning on 14838's figures: local microclimates explains what one yard in Horseheads can differ from the 14838 normal, while zone vs. frost date explains why Zone 5b and Horseheads's frost date answer different questions.