New Market, IA 51646 Frost Dates
51646, near New Market, IA: the frost window
The last spring frost here typically falls around 04/25, about 240 days from today. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/11, roughly 168 days after the last spring frost.
New Market sits in USDA Zone 5b (-15 to -10°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
New Market'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 New Market's last frost
04/25 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 05/07 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
New Market against the rest of the dataset
About 168 days separate New Market's last and first frost, putting it 29,776 of 40,283 ZIP codes nationally. Within IA, it ranks 390 of 1,042.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 51646: zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 5b and New Market's frost date answer different questions, and the frost range, on how to read the range around New Market's dates instead of trusting one.