Chesapeake, VA 23320 Frost Dates
23320, near Chesapeake, VA: the frost window
Around 03/23 is the usual last spring frost, about 207 days away. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 11/16, roughly 239 days after the last spring frost.
Zone 8a (10 to 15°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 Chesapeake, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
Chesapeake's growing season runs out in roughly 11 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 Chesapeake's last frost
03/23 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 03/07 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 04/06 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Chesapeake against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 239 frost-free days, Chesapeake places 8,730 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within VA, it ranks 48 of 1,178.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 23320: zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 8a and Chesapeake's frost date answer different questions, and the frost range, on how to read the range around Chesapeake's dates instead of trusting one.