Ocean Isle Beach, NC 28459 Frost Dates
28459, near Ocean Isle Beach, NC: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 03/20, roughly 204 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 11/17, roughly 243 days after the last spring frost.
Zone 8b (15 to 20°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 Ocean Isle Beach, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
Ocean Isle Beach's growing season runs out in roughly 12 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 Ocean Isle Beach's last frost
03/20 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 02/28 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 04/04 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Ocean Isle Beach against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 243 frost-free days, Ocean Isle Beach places 8,315 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within NC, it ranks 61 of 1,078.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 28459: the frost range, on how to read the range around Ocean Isle Beach's dates instead of trusting one, and local microclimates, on what one yard in Ocean Isle Beach can differ from the 28459 normal.