Lafayette, IN 47909 Frost Dates
47909, near Lafayette, IN: the frost window
Around 04/20 is the usual last spring frost, about 235 days away. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/20, roughly 182 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 8 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
04/20 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/06 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/06 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Lafayette against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 182 frost-free days, Lafayette places 24,063 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within IN, it ranks 422 of 927.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 47909: local microclimates, on what one yard in Lafayette can differ from the 47909 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 6a and Lafayette's frost date answer different questions.