Nags Head, NC 27959 Frost Dates
27959, near Nags Head, NC: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 03/15, roughly 199 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 12/06, roughly 266 days after the last spring frost.
Nags Head sits in USDA Zone 9a (20 to 25°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
Nags Head's growing season runs out in roughly 14 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 Nags Head's last frost
03/15 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 02/23 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 03/30 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Nags Head against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 266 frost-free days, Nags Head places 5,937 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within NC, it ranks 21 of 1,078.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 27959: local microclimates, on what one yard in Nags Head can differ from the 27959 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 9a and Nags Head's frost date answer different questions.