Chatham, VA 24549 Frost Dates
24549, near Chatham, VA: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 04/22, roughly 237 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/23, roughly 183 days after the last spring frost.
Chatham sits in USDA Zone 7b (5 to 10°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
Chatham'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 Chatham's last frost
04/22 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/07 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.
Chatham against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 183 frost-free days, Chatham places 23,912 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within VA, it ranks 965 of 1,178.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 24549: local microclimates, on what one yard in Chatham can differ from the 24549 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 7b and Chatham's frost date answer different questions.