Catawba, NC 28609 Frost Dates
Catawba, NC: when does the frost end?
Around 03/24 is the usual last spring frost, about 208 days away. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 11/08, roughly 230 days after the last spring frost.
Zone 8a (10 to 15°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 Catawba, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
With roughly 10 weeks until Catawba's first fall frost, a row cover or cold frame is what stretches the last few weeks of harvest here.
The actual range around Catawba's last frost
03/24 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 03/05 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 04/09 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Catawba against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 230 frost-free days, Catawba places 10,455 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within NC, it ranks 232 of 1,078.
Learn more
Before leaning on 28609's figures: local microclimates explains what one yard in Catawba can differ from the 28609 normal, while zone vs. frost date explains why Zone 8a and Catawba's frost date answer different questions.