Mars, PA 16046 Frost Dates
16046, near Mars, PA: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 04/28, roughly 243 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/18, roughly 172 days after the last spring frost.
Mars sits in USDA Zone 6b (-5 to 0°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
Mars'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 Mars's last frost
04/28 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/15 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/15 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Mars against the rest of the dataset
About 172 days separate Mars's last and first frost, putting it 28,375 of 40,283 ZIP codes nationally. Within PA, it ranks 1,379 of 2,088.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 16046: local microclimates, on what one yard in Mars can differ from the 16046 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 6b and Mars's frost date answer different questions.