South Shore, KY 45663 Frost Dates
45663, near South Shore, KY: the frost window
Around 04/17 is the usual last spring frost, about 232 days away. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/25, roughly 191 days after the last spring frost.
Zone 6b (-5 to 0°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 South Shore, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
South Shore'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.
Why 04/17 isn't a guarantee
04/17 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/03 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/05 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
South Shore against the rest of the dataset
About 191 days separate South Shore's last and first frost, putting it 20,833 of 40,283 ZIP codes nationally. Within KY, it ranks 505 of 909.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 45663: local microclimates, on what one yard in South Shore can differ from the 45663 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 6b and South Shore's frost date answer different questions.