McIntosh, AL 36550 Frost Dates
36550, near McIntosh, AL: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 02/28, roughly 184 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 11/27, roughly 270 days after the last spring frost.
McIntosh 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
McIntosh's growing season runs out in roughly 13 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 McIntosh's last frost
02/28 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 02/01 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 03/21 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
McIntosh against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 270 frost-free days, McIntosh places 5,633 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within AL, it ranks 55 of 809.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 36550: local microclimates, on what one yard in McIntosh can differ from the 36550 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 8b and McIntosh's frost date answer different questions.