Dauphin, PA 17128 Frost Dates
17128, near Dauphin, PA: the frost window
The last spring frost here typically falls around 04/09, about 224 days from today. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 11/01, roughly 205 days after the last spring frost.
Zone 7a (0 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 Dauphin, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
Dauphin's growing season runs out in roughly 9 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 Dauphin's last frost
04/09 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 03/27 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 04/25 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Dauphin against the rest of the dataset
About 205 days separate Dauphin's last and first frost, putting it 16,378 of 40,283 ZIP codes nationally. Within PA, it ranks 182 of 2,088.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 17128: the frost range, on how to read the range around Dauphin's dates instead of trusting one, and local microclimates, on what one yard in Dauphin can differ from the 17128 normal.