Chelsea, MI 48118 Frost Dates
48118, near Chelsea, MI: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 04/30, roughly 245 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/12, roughly 163 days after the last spring frost.
Chelsea 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
Chelsea's growing season runs out in roughly 6 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 Chelsea's last frost
04/30 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/18 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.
Chelsea against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 163 frost-free days, Chelsea places 31,375 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within MI, it ranks 515 of 1,153.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 48118: local microclimates, on what one yard in Chelsea can differ from the 48118 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 6a and Chelsea's frost date answer different questions.