Horse Cave, KY 42749 Frost Dates
42749, near Horse Cave, KY: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 04/09, roughly 224 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/27, roughly 201 days after the last spring frost.
Horse Cave 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
Horse Cave'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 Horse Cave's last frost
04/09 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 03/24 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 04/28 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Horse Cave against the rest of the dataset
Horse Cave's growing season runs about 201 days, ranking 17,526 of 40,283 US ZIP codes measured here, longest to shortest. Within KY, it ranks 253 of 909.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 42749: local microclimates, on what one yard in Horse Cave can differ from the 42749 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 7a and Horse Cave's frost date answer different questions.