Bowie, MD 20716 Frost Dates
20716, near Bowie, MD: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 04/22, roughly 237 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/22, roughly 183 days after the last spring frost.
Zone 7b (5 to 10°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 Bowie, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
Bowie's growing season runs out in roughly 8 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 Bowie's last frost
04/22 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/03 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/09 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Bowie against the rest of the dataset
Bowie's growing season runs about 183 days, ranking 23,744 of 40,283 US ZIP codes measured here, longest to shortest. Within MD, it ranks 536 of 583.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 20716: zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 7b and Bowie's frost date answer different questions, and the frost range, on how to read the range around Bowie's dates instead of trusting one.