Raleigh, NC 27698 Frost Dates
27698, near Raleigh, NC: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 03/28, roughly 212 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 11/08, roughly 229 days after the last spring frost.
Raleigh 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
Raleigh'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.
The actual range around Raleigh's last frost
03/28 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 03/08 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 04/12 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Raleigh against the rest of the dataset
Raleigh's growing season runs about 229 days, ranking 10,530 of 40,283 US ZIP codes measured here, longest to shortest. Within NC, it ranks 271 of 1,078.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 27698: zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 8a and Raleigh's frost date answer different questions, and the frost range, on how to read the range around Raleigh's dates instead of trusting one.