Rainsville, AL 35986 Frost Dates
35986, near Rainsville, AL: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 03/29, roughly 213 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 11/08, roughly 225 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 Rainsville, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
Rainsville's growing season runs out in roughly 10 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 Rainsville's last frost
03/29 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 03/07 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 04/16 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Rainsville against the rest of the dataset
About 225 days separate Rainsville's last and first frost, putting it 11,400 of 40,283 ZIP codes nationally. Within AL, it ranks 591 of 809.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 35986: the frost range, on how to read the range around Rainsville's dates instead of trusting one, and local microclimates, on what one yard in Rainsville can differ from the 35986 normal.