McKean, PA 16426 Frost Dates
16426, near McKean, PA: the frost window
Around 04/26 is the usual last spring frost, about 241 days away. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 11/04, roughly 192 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 McKean, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
McKean's growing season runs out in roughly 10 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 McKean's last frost
04/26 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/10 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.
McKean against the rest of the dataset
About 192 days separate McKean's last and first frost, putting it 20,523 of 40,283 ZIP codes nationally. Within PA, it ranks 552 of 2,088.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 16426: local microclimates, on what one yard in McKean can differ from the 16426 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 6a and McKean's frost date answer different questions.