Southern Pines, NC 28387 Frost Dates
28387, near Southern Pines, NC: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 03/25, roughly 209 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 11/14, roughly 235 days after the last spring frost.
Southern Pines 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
Southern Pines'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 Southern Pines's last frost
03/25 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 03/06 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 04/10 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Southern Pines against the rest of the dataset
About 235 days separate Southern Pines's last and first frost, putting it 9,567 of 40,283 ZIP codes nationally. Within NC, it ranks 144 of 1,078.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 28387: local microclimates, on what one yard in Southern Pines can differ from the 28387 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 8a and Southern Pines's frost date answer different questions.