Lafayette, IN 47996 Frost Dates
47996, 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.
Lafayette sits in USDA Zone 6a (-10 to -5°F average annual minimum). The dates above are NOAA's 1991-2020 normal at the nearest reporting station, a 30-year average, not a forecast.
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.
The actual range around Lafayette's last frost
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
About 173 days separate Lafayette's last and first frost, putting it 27,743 of 40,283 ZIP codes nationally. Within IN, it ranks 698 of 927.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 47996: zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 6a and Lafayette's frost date answer different questions, and the frost range, on how to read the range around Lafayette's dates instead of trusting one.