McDonald, OH 44440 Frost Dates
44440, near McDonald, OH: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 05/01, roughly 246 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/17, roughly 167 days after the last spring frost.
McDonald sits in USDA Zone 6a (-10 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
McDonald's growing season runs out in roughly 7 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 McDonald's last frost
05/01 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/16 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/20 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
McDonald against the rest of the dataset
About 167 days separate McDonald's last and first frost, putting it 29,990 of 40,283 ZIP codes nationally. Within OH, it ranks 1,270 of 1,383.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 44440: local microclimates, on what one yard in McDonald can differ from the 44440 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 6a and McDonald's frost date answer different questions.