St. Michaels, MD 21663 Frost Dates
21663, near St. Michaels, MD: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 04/01, roughly 216 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 11/07, roughly 220 days after the last spring frost.
St. Michaels sits in USDA Zone 8a (10 to 15°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
St. Michaels'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.
Why 04/01 isn't a guarantee
04/01 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 03/18 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 04/15 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
St. Michaels against the rest of the dataset
About 220 days separate St. Michaels's last and first frost, putting it 12,860 of 40,283 ZIP codes nationally. Within MD, it ranks 186 of 583.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 21663: local microclimates, on what one yard in St. Michaels can differ from the 21663 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 8a and St. Michaels's frost date answer different questions.