Elizabethtown, PA 17570 Frost Dates
17570, near Elizabethtown, PA: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 04/30, roughly 245 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/10, roughly 162 days after the last spring frost.
The USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map puts Elizabethtown in Zone 7a (0 to 5°F average annual minimum); frost dates are NOAA's 1991-2020 station normal, not this year's forecast.
Stretching the season past the first frost
Elizabethtown's growing season runs out in roughly 6 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 Elizabethtown's last frost
04/30 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/16 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.
Elizabethtown against the rest of the dataset
About 162 days separate Elizabethtown's last and first frost, putting it 31,685 of 40,283 ZIP codes nationally. Within PA, it ranks 1,650 of 2,088.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 17570: local microclimates, on what one yard in Elizabethtown can differ from the 17570 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 7a and Elizabethtown's frost date answer different questions.