East Lansing, MI 48823 Frost Dates
East Lansing, MI: when does the frost end?
Around 04/28 is the usual last spring frost, about 243 days away. 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 East Lansing, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
With roughly 7 weeks until East Lansing's first fall frost, a row cover or cold frame is what stretches the last few weeks of harvest here.
The actual range around East Lansing's last frost
04/28 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/13 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/16 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
East Lansing against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 173 frost-free days, East Lansing places 27,772 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within MI, it ranks 204 of 1,153.
Learn more
Before leaning on 48823's figures: local microclimates explains what one yard in East Lansing can differ from the 48823 normal, while zone vs. frost date explains why Zone 6a and East Lansing's frost date answer different questions.