South Bend, IN 46616 Frost Dates
South Bend, IN: when does the frost end?
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 05/01, roughly 246 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/19, roughly 170 days after the last spring frost.
Zone 6a (-10 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 South Bend, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
With roughly 7 weeks until South Bend's first fall frost, a row cover or cold frame is what stretches the last few weeks of harvest here.
The actual range around South Bend'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 05/17 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
South Bend against the rest of the dataset
About 170 days separate South Bend's last and first frost, putting it 28,876 of 40,283 ZIP codes nationally. Within IN, it ranks 793 of 927.
Learn more
Before leaning on 46616's figures: local microclimates explains what one yard in South Bend can differ from the 46616 normal, while zone vs. frost date explains why Zone 6a and South Bend's frost date answer different questions.