Mount Vernon, KY 40456 Frost Dates
40456, near Mount Vernon, KY: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 04/18, roughly 233 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/24, roughly 189 days after the last spring frost.
Zone 7a (0 to 5°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 Mount Vernon, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
Mount Vernon's growing season runs out in roughly 8 weeks — a cold frame or greenhouse kit is the usual way to keep cool-weather crops going past the first frost.
How much risk comes with planting early here
04/18 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 03/31 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/06 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Mount Vernon against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 189 frost-free days, Mount Vernon places 21,599 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within KY, it ranks 563 of 909.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 40456: local microclimates, on what one yard in Mount Vernon can differ from the 40456 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 7a and Mount Vernon's frost date answer different questions.