Kinston, NC 28503 Frost Dates
28503, near Kinston, NC: the frost window
Around 03/25 is the usual last spring frost, about 209 days away. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 11/11, roughly 232 days after the last spring frost.
Kinston sits in USDA Zone 8b (15 to 20°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
Kinston'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 Kinston's last frost
03/25 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 03/09 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 04/07 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Kinston against the rest of the dataset
About 232 days separate Kinston's last and first frost, putting it 10,034 of 40,283 ZIP codes nationally. Within NC, it ranks 180 of 1,078.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 28503: zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 8b and Kinston's frost date answer different questions, and the frost range, on how to read the range around Kinston's dates instead of trusting one.