Watterson Park, KY 40290 Frost Dates
40290, near Watterson Park, KY: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 04/03, roughly 218 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 11/03, roughly 214 days after the last spring frost.
Watterson Park sits in USDA Zone 7a (0 to 5°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
Watterson Park'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.
Why 04/03 isn't a guarantee
04/03 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 03/18 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 04/19 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Watterson Park against the rest of the dataset
About 214 days separate Watterson Park's last and first frost, putting it 14,313 of 40,283 ZIP codes nationally. Within KY, it ranks 65 of 909.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 40290: local microclimates, on what one yard in Watterson Park can differ from the 40290 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 7a and Watterson Park's frost date answer different questions.