Charleston, WV 25301 Frost Dates
25301, near Charleston, WV: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 04/16, roughly 231 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/26, roughly 192 days after the last spring frost.
Zone 7a (0 to 5°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 Charleston, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
Charleston'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 Charleston's last frost
04/16 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/01 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/05 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Charleston against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 192 frost-free days, Charleston places 20,150 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within WV, it ranks 236 of 885.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 25301: zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 7a and Charleston's frost date answer different questions, and the frost range, on how to read the range around Charleston's dates instead of trusting one.