Lafayette, IN 47905 Frost Dates
47905, near Lafayette, IN: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 04/26, roughly 241 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/18, 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 Lafayette, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
Lafayette'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.
How much risk comes with planting early here
04/26 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 05/14 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Lafayette against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 173 frost-free days, Lafayette places 27,742 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within IN, it ranks 697 of 927.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 47905: local microclimates, on what one yard in Lafayette can differ from the 47905 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 6a and Lafayette's frost date answer different questions.