Shirley, IN 47384 Frost Dates
47384, near Shirley, IN: the frost window
The last spring frost here typically falls around 04/27, about 242 days from today. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/17, roughly 173 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 Shirley, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
Shirley'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 Shirley's last frost
04/27 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/11 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/12 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Shirley against the rest of the dataset
About 173 days separate Shirley's last and first frost, putting it 28,009 of 40,283 ZIP codes nationally. Within IN, it ranks 731 of 927.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 47384: zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 6a and Shirley's frost date answer different questions, and the frost range, on how to read the range around Shirley's dates instead of trusting one.