Owensboro, KY 42304 Frost Dates
42304, near Owensboro, KY: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 04/02, roughly 217 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 11/01, roughly 211 days after the last spring frost.
Owensboro 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
Owensboro's growing season runs out in roughly 9 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 Owensboro's last frost
04/02 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 03/17 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 04/20 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Owensboro against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 211 frost-free days, Owensboro places 14,713 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within KY, it ranks 106 of 909.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 42304: zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 7a and Owensboro's frost date answer different questions, and the frost range, on how to read the range around Owensboro's dates instead of trusting one.