Gladstone, MI 49872 Frost Dates
49872, near Gladstone, MI: the frost window
Around 05/18 is the usual last spring frost, about 263 days away. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/04, roughly 137 days after the last spring frost.
Zone 5a (-20 to -15°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 Gladstone, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
Gladstone's growing season runs out in roughly 5 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 Gladstone's last frost
05/18 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 05/03 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 06/02 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Gladstone against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 137 frost-free days, Gladstone places 37,510 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within MI, it ranks 939 of 1,153.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 49872: local microclimates, on what one yard in Gladstone can differ from the 49872 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 5a and Gladstone's frost date answer different questions.